Calling Retreat

Though Tyson is never afraid to make a call when assigned a job by the Moriarty Mirrors, he is also one of the last to call for a full retreat.

He knows that many employees will hold off on calling a retreat at all, fearing the consequences of failing the Moriarty Mirrors, but no matter how servile Tyson maybe, when he is tasked with an assignment he will act to the best of his judgement and refuses to buckle from what he believes. It’s why he’s an asset to the Moriarty Mirrors in the first place.

Instead, Tyson’s lack of full retreats comes from his more cautious approach and meticulous planning. He will gladly pull out before being an offensive, replan, and approach once more a dozen times before committing if that is what is needed.

He also isn’t afraid to approach again when a temporary retreat is forced, rather than abandoning the job completely. Tyson is the furthest from reckless, but he knows how to use confusion and panic as weapons in his favour. Once a retreat is forced, few would expect the next assault to follow immediately.

Rather than letting the dust settle, Tyson uses it as cover.

Weapons

Though he is an excellent marksman, Tyson has an obvious bias towards knives rather than guns when he needs a weapon. For a multitude of reasons: wanting to remain as quiet as possible, utilising the twenty-one feet rule, and needing to make sure the death sticks to him.

When he needs to use a gun, Tyson favours using handguns: his normal Glock or a Browning ideally. He genuinely hates when a situation calls for a shotgun, but Tyson knows how to use any gun with a reliable aim. He’s nowhere near the kind of shot Sebastian is, but if the Colonel had fallen, it would have been his job as his spotter to take the shot instead.

When it comes to knives, Tyson usually relies on his hunting/combat knives or the various switchblades that he has hidden around his apartment: and London as a whole. Given a choice, Tyson tends to favour a clip point, but he also keeps a few drop and tanto points around.

Undercover Jobs

Though Tyson prefers not to pretend he has an ability that he cannot provide if someone requires it, he has pretended to have a plethora of jobs during his time working for the Moriarty Mirrors.

It’s rare to catch Tyson in a lie, but those undercover jobs are the ones that are most likely to cause a problem for him; especially those he’s needed to return to multiple times.

There is someone who works at his local vet that continues to operate under the assumption that Tyson is an electrical engineer, one of the professors at the University of London who thinks that Tyson is a slight-of-hand-magician (in one of the odder cons that Lex dragged Tyson into), and a restaurant owners who believes that he is a CEO working in competition with Nate.

Digging his own grave

Tyson is digging his own grave.

He has been doing that for years. He doesn’t exactly want to die, but equally, Tyson is not particularly attached to living either. He won’t throw away his life pointlessly and Tyson isn’t actively looking for ways to die, but the value he places on his own life is impossibility low.

Tyson puts the fact that there are people that still depend on him, that there is still work to be done, far higher than the simple need to continue living into his motivations for continuing to live. It’s a motivation that has kept him going for years, but it’s a dangerous one that will eventually end him if the benefits to others by his death outweigh those by his continued existence in Tyson’s mind.

The former Lieutenant is in a curious position, especially from a medical intervention stance. His disinterest in his own life is not an active danger to himself or others, and yet he’s clearly courting death and will continue to do so until it eventually kills him. He could live for years, or days, on the flip of a coin.

Cameras

Tyson has five cameras and half a dozen lenses for the cameras, for the work he does for his owners.

Tyson changes the cameras he has often, for security reasons, but he currently has:

• Nikon D7000
• Nikon 1 V2
• Jujifilm FinePix SL1000
• Samsung WB31F *
• Panasonic HC-V110 - camcorder*

*These are personal use cameras as well, the others are exclusively for work.

Odds in his favour

Though Tyson never takes an unnecessary risk and always stacks the odds in his favour, he never stacks the deck completely again his opponents.

For example: whilst Tyson will gladly go into a confrontation two-verses-one with two backups waiting a safe distance away just in case, Tyson goes out of his way to avoid bring those other two people with him to that initial meeting.

The odds should be in his favour, not rigged. When Tyson’s the one dealing the cards, that is how it will always be. Rigged in his favour, but someone clever enough, or cunning enough, or just damn lucky enough can prove their worth and win that hand; if not the round, or game.

Tyson believes in playing fair and he is - more or less - an optimist, but most importantly, Tyson believes in giving opportunities. If he crushes every opposition under heel, he won’t learn anything; and there is a greater risk of the Moriarty Mirrors growing restless in easy waters.

As long as Tyson’s certain he can survive and recoup any losses within a timely manner, then he has nothing to lose by giving someone else the opportunity to temporarily gain the upper hand. From that he can learn how to use the trick in his own advantage and how to prevent others from deploying it against them in the future, rather than getting blindsided by these events.

And, there is also the possibility of an opportunity being extended to those who gained the upper hand: a place within or partnership with the web, or extended privileges to those already in that position.

Initiative and talent should always be rewarded, and Tyson would much rather take a chance to give others that stage to flourish on, than to salt the earth on the off chance of losing a bet.

Most of the time, it won’t matter. Tyson will have stacked the odds in his favour and he will win. The result will be exactly the same as if he made it impossible to lose, but Tyson will know the difference. He will know that he gave his opponent a chance to prove themselves.

Basic Training

Though Tyson will often shrug off the first four years of his time in the army as ‘basic training’ and the remaining seven years as active service, split as five years training the dogs and then two years on the front line with Sebastian, there are glaring holes in that story for those who know better.

Just basic training generally does not last four years and there are entries in his service record before those four years end. In part, Tyson’s additional time training was spent learning how to train the service dogs which - at most - added a few months, but the primary reason is that Tyson was being trained as a specialist strategist; a mathematical prodigy with calculating tactical mind.

Tyson will comfortably admit that he ‘was doing long-term planning before joining the front lines’, though he always makes it sound as though that purely began during his days in Turkmenistan whilst training the service dogs*. Tyson did spend a lot of time in Turkmenistan doing exactly that, but that still leaves the prior service records unaccounted for.

The truth is that the last two years of his ‘basic training’ alternated between Tyson going through increasingly intense training regimes, participating in multiple wargames, and dropping into active combat zones as an ‘in compound only’ strategist; including the first time he brushed shoulders with Captain Samson, before joining the First Bangalore Pioneers.

During that time, Tyson never went out on patrol and his mathematical abilities were hushed up to keep him as a ‘secret weapon, of sorts’**. This was a role that Tyson would end up taking during his actual years on the front line too, before becoming Moran’s spotter, after which only the extent of his strategical abilities - rather than his entire existence - was considered classified.

* When Tyson would go out with the trained service dogs to get them situated in their active deployments, there was always a reason that Tyson was chosen to go to those particular compounds and Hal to others. Whichever compound Tyson would be handing off dogs to would also be one that he had been working as a strategist for, or was needed as a ‘strategic adviser’ to handle the current situation. 

** Any specialised soldier has a target painted on their backs and strategists (alongside doctors) were prime targets to takeout/kidnaps to disrupting efforts/undermind plans on both sides.

Less rather than more

Tyson frequently acts like something he isn’t to make people underestimate him, despite refusing to admit that he’s an underdog, and prefers to be seen briefly rather than completely invisible; leaving a false impression, rather than none.

It is incredibly rare that Tyson will pretend to have an ability or be something that he isn’t, that implies more knowledge than he has. Tyson is completely comfortable convincing people that he isn’t as smart as he actually is or that he isn’t as physically capable as he actually is.

However, Tyson hates the risk of giving the impression that he’s more talented. That impression can bite him in the arse much easier, especially if the wrong person is given that impression and needs to rely on him to provide something that Tyson isn’t capable of giving.

Disappearing

Whilst certainly not a master of illusions by any stretch of the imagination, Tyson has a talent for disappearing.

In part, this can be attributed to his habit of wandering away from conversationsand leaving without a second thought about saying his goodbyes. He can certainly behave ‘like a ninja’ when he desires to, but Tyson largely hears that when people don’t register him walking away.

That is where most of Tyson’s disappearing happens. He makes sure that rather than going unnoticed, he is quickly dismissed from people’s minds. He didn’t slip off quickly into the night. Tyson paused to politely ask people to move out of his way and was easily dismissed from their minds the second he left their vision.

When he actively needs to disappear, however, Tyson is gone in the blink of an eye. With his form of Synesthesia and talent for parkour, he has no trouble losing pursuers and Tyson is an old hand at avoiding security cameras too.

Teenagers

Tyson isn’t afraid of teenagers.

He distrusts everyone equally, regardless of age, but Tyson is overly aware of how easily teenagers are manipulated by people like him for the web or other causes. Despite his best of intentions, Tyson knows that he is one of the worst influences to be around a teenager.

When recruiting for the web, Tyson goes out of his way to avoid anyone too young, no matter how much talent they possess and - if he suspects that others have their eyes on that person - will try to direct them elsewhere. If they are still as useful to the web once they’re older, then it’s no longer Tyson’s responsibility.

Hospitals

Over the years Tyson has sustained many injuries, and he is likely to receive many more before his time in the web comes to a close.

He has gone through broken bones, dozens of concussions, bullet wounds, a chemical attack in the army that left him temporarily blind, nails being ripped out in interrogation, a punctured lung, and far more in his time. Through all of that, he has never gotten any better at listening to doctor’s orders.

In any official records, most of his injuries are unaccounted for. That is one of the downsides of having the Moriarty Mirrors’ doctors taking care of his wounds. Whenever he’s in deep enough trouble to end up in an official hospital, Tyson ends up in hot water over where the unaccounted wounds came from.

Surveillance

Though Tyson can understand the worry of constant surveillance, he finds the cameras around London to be a comforting presence.

Wherever he goes, backup from the web is never far away. If he can spot a security camera and get close enough to clearly blink at it, Tyson can guarantee getting a message to the Moriarty Mirrors, even in situations where he couldn’t use his phone without alerting the people around him.

He knows that if he ever goes missing, the web can track him down and rescue him that way. There are times when that isn’t true, when Tyson is purposefully avoiding the cameras’ gaze to avoid enemies of the web tracking him, but in those cases, the web would already be aware of his intended destination and could track him down that way.

Poison

Though he generally prefers to offer a clean and quick death, Tyson isn’t completely comfortable with his use of poisons. It feels too poetic, too easy to detach from it and shake away the guilt of each kill. That doesn’t feel right to Tyson.

He keeps a lot of poisons and antidotes in his medicine cabinet, some that he’s acquired in his time in the web and some that Tyson has made himself. His medicine cabinet has three shelves: the top is the poisons, the middle is the antidotes, and the third in items you’d usually find in a medicine cabinet.

The vials are kept in coloured bottles with strings and labels attached which list the plants used in that poison or antidote written on so Tyson knows what they are, the colour of the card changes depending on if it is an antidote, green, or poison, red. The poisons are held in the racks test tubes are held in when in science classrooms.

He uses the poisons against enemies of the web, and also on Moriarty. It’s an old game between them at this point, poison in coffee to keep their immunity up and keep them on their toes.

Internship

As a teenager, Tyson interned as a vet.

His father had intended for Tyson to - predictably - intern somewhere more academic, but Tyson had remembered the age Jethro had been when their father pushed him into an internship at the college and instead took the initiate to get his own internship first.

Tyson was banking on two favours: it would look bad if Tyson bowed out of the first internship and his father would not want that, and it would show that he was ‘trying to better himself without prompting’ and give his father ammunition to boast with at his dinner parties.

Both of those points paid off and Tyson was free to internship at a local vet’s clinic. Mostly Tyson was just at the register, but it gave him enough ‘proof of experience handling animals’ to get into the service dog program almost immediately, which is what Tyson had intended.

Dogs body

Tyson walks a fine line between allowing himself to be a general dog’s body for the employees of the web and allowing those employees to step out of line.

He is overly aware of his reputation as ‘the second-hand pet’, due to his relationship with The Colonel. He might be in a favourable position with the Moriarty Mirrors, but that doesn’t put him in a favourable light to the employees of the web who aren’t so fortunate.

For the most part, Tyson knows how to play that smart: calculated risks. None of them are foolish enough to do any real damage to him, but if they roughly brush past him during a shared mission Tyson will swallow his pride to let them vent that frustration and keep them focused on the job.

He only allows employees to dump paperwork with him when he either knows that they are overworked and it will be overall beneficial to do so, or else Tyson knows that - whilst a valuable employee in other matters - it’s in the web’s best interests if he handles that work instead.

Tyson plays the system under the pretence of being a dog’s body. He knows that he is strong enough to take whatever abuse they wish to throw at him and that the threat of damaging the Moriarty Mirror’s precious Pup will keep them from doing anything that Tyson would need to stop them from doing.

Assumptions

Given how much effort Tyson puts into making sure that others gain a false implication about who he is, Tyson is surprisingly quick to latch onto preconceived assumptions about people based on the words of other people.

Tyson trusts his gut to make a call about that person if the situation arises and Tyson is willing to change his view when necessary, but Tyson hasn’t survived so long by ignoring the information handed to him.

He tends to put more faith in an assertion of strength than weakness. Tyson knows from experience that its easier to appear weaker and less intelligent than one than to achieve the reverse.

If web contacts tell Tyson that someone isn’t dangerous, Tyson’s hackles immediately raise, but Tyson will generally accept the assessment of someone being dangerous.

Crab Fishing

When Tyson takes his nephew to the beach, they make the time to go crab fishing.

Though Tyson is rather lukewarm on the topic of fishing, preferring to meditate to clear his mind, James enjoys catching crabs and Tyson enjoys getting to sit quietly on the pier with Lily; whilst Bobby paddles around in the water, theoretically chasing crabs towards James.

It began as a way to keep James occupied and under the dog’s watchful eyes, whilst Tyson ‘discouraged’ some unwanted attention from enemies of the web.

Tyson can’t even remember what excuse he gave when he returned with busted knuckles, only that James didn’t believe it and decided to accept that answer anyway.

Deceiving an eight-year-old shouldn’t make fish and chips taste better.

Motivation

When Tyson is working, he tends to overwork himself constantly.

He’s good at keeping himself motivated and pushing through a task until the end. Burning the candle at both ends constantly, and then trying to light the middle too. However, once Tyson runs out of stream and putters to a stop, he has no idea to get his wheels turning again.

He just… stumbles upon motivation again.

Part of Tyson’s issue is that once he reaches the point where he’s out of motivation, he begins to panic about not getting anything done and his anxiety makes it impossible for him to get anything done.

Then, after spending three days slumped over the coffee table without achieving anything, Tyson will blink and be halfway through the twelve completed task without really internalising having done anything.

Finding

His dissatisfaction with radar aside, Tyson is great at finding things.

He has a good head for organisation and pattern recognition, even when working with someone else’s system, making him the ideal person to throw into an achieve to track down a file; this earnt him a fair few favours with the law students at his university and with lawyers working for the web.

Tyson honestly enjoys the organised chaos of an archive room. It’s one of the few parts of being undercover in Scotland Yard that Tyson enjoys: rummaging through old cardboard boxes and leaving them tidier than he found them, the scent and feel of old paper.

When he’s sick of being the ‘second-hand pet’, yet needs to stay on site to complete his work, Tyson will retreat into the archives and bury himself in a quiet corner. This also gives him an opportunity to hear things that wouldn’t ordinarily be said around him, as archives primary purpose the world around is a discreet meeting place.

Radar

Though Tyson is incredibly talented with maps, one of his least favourite assignments was having to coordinate with the radar to track enemy movements whilst in flight.

It was rare that Tyson was taken on those missions, and it was easier than trying to coordinate from second-hand information from someone else reading the radar, but that did nothing to diminish Tyson’s hatred of those assignments.

He can’t explain how difficult it was to combine the way radar displays area information with the way traditional maps displays area information. The latter is the structure of Tyson’s entire life, the way he literally viewed the world through his Synesthesia and has shaped his entire thought process.

The former is an entirely different being. He can work out how to transfer that information if given time, but it’s apples to oranges. As though suddenly working with an entirely new language. He feels lost and off-kilter.

For Tyson, the worst part if that he can’t explain why it’s so difficult to understand or what makes it so different from his usual type of mapping.