Hank Mason

[Hank Mason]

HANK Z. MASON

33. HUNTER. THE ONLY WAY I KNOW BASICS Character full name: Hank Zachariah Mason Nick name or alias: Hank or Mason mainly. There may be others that call him things like Spook, Ghost or Ninja relating to his job in the Army and he takes it in stride but he would prefer they not use those kinds of nicknames for him. As is the nature of his former occupation he prefers to not reference it at all. Height: 6'1 Body type: Toned, Athletic Age: 33 Gender: Male PERSONALITY: Pre-POW Hank: Hank had always been a friendly, outgoing kind of guy. Quick to smile, tell a joke. He made friends easily and was popular in school. The kind of guy that everyone liked and got along with. Never a bad thing to say about anyone. He went out of his way to help people and wasn't quick to judge. The man was an optimist, he truely believed in the things he was told growing up. How great our country is, how lucky we are. That honor and country were worth fighting for. He still believes most of that, but he has a bigger picture of it now. One that's not so pretty. Post-POW Hank: He's still a nice guy, you can't really take that away from him. Still has that boyish charm he always had. The smile that makes you wanna be his friend or perhaps his girlfriend. The man still has the affinity towards being nice to people just because it's the right thing to do. However, there is a bit more darkness behind the scenes now. And... probably not for the reasons you might expect. Gone is the devout believer and all trusting young man he was before he joined the Army. He still thinks most people in general are decent. It's the organizations and the powerful that he doesn't trust anymore. The bigger and more powerful, the more corrupt most likely is his opinion. He still loves his country but has a less favorable opinion of it's government. Unfortunately, at this point and time he also doesn't see a way to fix it. For all intents and purposes, it's too far gone. Much too wide spread. So, he does his best to keep to himself, and do what he can for his little corner of the world and the people he cares about. FRIENDS AND FAMILY: Parents: Joseph and Janice Mason Siblings: Travis Mason Extended Family: Important Others: HISTORY: Hank Zachariah Mason was the second born, second son and youngest child of Mr. and Mrs. Mason of Thibodaux, Louisiana. Thibodaux being a small town in the heart of Louisiana's bayou country. Saying that he was the youngest of the two boys doesn't really give you the full picture though. The brothers were born just over a year a part. Their mama almost had it timed perfectly. Barely making it past that year mark by nineteen days. This closeness in age meant that they didn't really have a lot of space between them as far as experiences went. It wasn't like big brother Travis went through a phase of growing up and the parents were prepared later on to deal with it when Hank went though a similar process. Nope, it was more like... Travis hit the terrible twos and so did Hank. A double whammy despite their not sharing the womb at the same time. Their experiences pretty much piggybacked each other. Infancy, early childhood, learning to walk, talk, first days of school, parent teacher conferences, first fights, first time they got called to the principals office. Everything came in twos. In some ways, it made things easier in others it was a bit overwhelming, but the Mason family didn't complain one bit and they wouldn't have it any other way. They both learned how to do things at the same time. Shared a lot of the same interests. This brought them close as brothers, it also made them competitive as young men. Cue adolescence and young adulthood. Pushing boundaries, hormones, girls. If you can imagine two headstrong teenage boys under the same roof at the same time. I think you get the idea here. With this also came a sense of wanting to forge their own identities. They were similar but not the same, not by a long shot. Hank was a bit more carefree and happy-go-lucky. Where Travis hid his intelligence behind that good old boy, redneck facade, Hank didn't hide it one bit. He enjoyed a spirited debate, reveled in it. In someways he could be a bit of a show-off, but he always did it in a way that didn't put people at odds. It was part of his charm. After high school and not long after his brother, Hank chose to join the military. Deciding he was best suited for the Army. He had scored high enough on the entrance exams that he garnered the attention of the military intelligence recruiter. He found himself intrigued by the offer and accepted it. That sent him on a path that started out the same as most in the Army, with basic training, but after that... his training was very, very, different from your average recruit. Done with basic he was sent to Fort Huachuca, Arizona for his Advanced Individual Training (AIT). That wasn't all the training he received though. Having graduated from AIT as the Distinguished Honor Graduate (top academic in the class) he was pressed into even more extensive and advanced training. Multiple trips back and forth between Fort Huachuca and the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California before he even got his first set of orders and his first official duty station. Then there was even more training to come. At the same time he was highly encourage to take college courses through the variety of resources offered to those in the military. Which he did. More assignments came and went. More training. At one point he was whisked off to The Farm (in Virginia) and The Point (in North Carolina), both CIA training facilities. Over the first six years of his military career he had managed to become not only a trained military intelligence soldier, but a fully trained CIA operative, completed his Bachelors degree in International Studies, and learned no less than five foreign languages; French, German, Russian, Arabic and a little Mandarin Chinese thrown in. On top of that, with his Bachelors degree finished he was then promoted and given an officers commission at the rank of first lieutenant. All of that was by the time he was twenty-four years old. For the next five or six years he traveled the world, his missions were mostly covert, sometimes not but always classified. He enjoyed what he did. Of course he was trained in combat arms as well, but unlike his brother he wasn't a sniper or a soldier on the front lines. His job was much more complex than that. Hank found himself on more than one occasion on the other side of enemy lines... and he had to adapt, learn to fit in... become the guy that nobody noticed. He learned how to do that very, very well. About three years ago there was a mission he was tapped for. Trained for and briefed on in detail. Highly secret. There were very few people who knew about it. It ended up with him being taken captive in Iraq. Actually, that WAS the mission. He spent the next two years as a prisoner of war (POW), a guest of the enemy Iraqi militant forces. A long two years before his release was negotiated quietly and he was then stashed away, held under guard for the better part of a year in a "safe house" while he filled in his handlers and superiors in on what their ambitious mission had accomplished. Though he'd been released from captivity and back on U.S. soil for a year now. He hadn't been allowed to tell his family. This was just one of the things that had disillusioned Hank. All that time his parents, his brother, his friends back home were still being told he was MIA and otherwise status unknown. Finally, after months of rehabilitation and de-briefing he was out of the military and no longer officially in the employ of the CIA. Though most will tell you that you are never really free of The Company. He headed home, spent some time with his parents. Not able to tell them the truth of what had happened. What was important was that he was back, alive and well. He tried to assure them of that. The phone calls to his brother were even more difficult, his brother a bit more savvy regarding what Hank had been up to. Even still he couldn't tell his brother the full story. As far as anyone outside a select few, Hank had been on assignment in Iraq and taken prisoner, held for three years and released just recently with an honorable discharge at the rank of Major. During his time in the military there was also something else he learned. Something that had nothing to do with his service, his job or his missions. There was something else out there, something unexplained. He had only caught glimpses of it on a few ocassions, but now that he was out on his own he intended to look into it, find out what the hell it was. EXTRA INFORMATION: (If it doesn't fit anywhere else in the app it goes here) WRITING SAMPLE: Admin Approved: See Jade Stone or Savannah Stark. JENNZ. PACIFIC USA. LUKE BRYAN Rules codeword: verified by The Chronicler

thanks brooklyn from caution, shine and atf!

[The Chronicler]