Vincent Lazzaro

Registry of the Evolved Database

File #17 Aug 2009 22:39

Summary

Name Vincent Lazzaro Aliases N/A Status Registered Evolved (Tier 3) Ability Vapor Form Gender Male Race/Eth. White Birthdate 11/04 Age 42 Height 5'8" Build Athletic Eyes Brown Hair Black Residence New York, New York Employment Unemployed Parents Oliver Lazzaro (Deceased) Victoria Lazzaro Siblings N/A Marital Status Joanna Renard (Divorced) Children Tasha Renard (Daughter) First Seen Weird Shit Last Seen N/A Profile Widely disliked and disrespected at his post with the NYPD for his stringent adherence to regulation and the law, Vincent was hired on as the first head of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis within the Department of Evolved Affairs. Exactly what he did there is still something of a mystery, but he seemed to have an aptitude for showing up at exactly the place and time most inconvenient for people with a stake in how the Department did business. He's since "resigned" and vanished in a flurry of media activity and attempted arrests after he leaked official documents regarding Moab and other evolved detainment programs to the press. He is currently considered armed, dangerous and wanted by the United States Government.

portrayed by Stanley Tucci

Background

A native New Yorker, Vincent entered the NYPD as a beat cop in his early 20s after finishing college and worked the streets some five or six years before moving up into investigation. He spent the next decade cycling from division to division, from Narcotics to Vice to Organized Crime to Homicide and back again, catching shit everywhere he went from fellow cops for his flat disinterest in maintaining the breed of minor corruption they made a mandatory part of life behind the thin blue line. Graft, bribery, taking a little off the top. He was never taken in, but he never reported anything either.

At least, not until his proclivities and sprawling field of experience made him a natural candidate to cycle into the department's Internal Affairs division.

From there he quickly began to forge a new reputation for himself, regularly letting fresh-faced uniforms off the hook for leads on bigger fish and raking those who refused to talk over the coals whenever he got the chance. He made life hell for many a decent (or at least hardworking) officer, and for a time, despite inevitable opposition and the occasional death threat, he seemed to really take pleasure in distorting social balance within the department. Meanwhile, his marriage of thirteen years broke up under the strain — his wife was a prosecutor — and his daughter went to live with her, leaving him with an empty apartment, occasional invites to volleyball games and a new set of checks to write out every month. He discovered his ability on his own shortly after the eclipse, and would eventually register himself without protest in the wake of the bomb and all associated disruption.

Late in 2008 he was accosted by three assailants on the stoop of an apartment building where he was set to meet a key witness for an upcoming corruption case, including at least one evolved negator. He managed to shoot and kill one in the scuffle that ensued, but was effectively KO'd when the negator forced him back into tangibility as he was passing through a fence rigged with razor wire, rendering "errors" into his aggregate form upon reconstitution. The resident who called 911 upon hearing shots fired probably saved his life — the black and white that showed up managed to get him into an ambulance before he could bleed to death.

He spent the next several weeks in the hospital having doctors piece him back together and was granted a full year of medical leave after that, presumably to iron out whatever kinks remained once the surgeons were through. Towards the end of 2009, he returned to his post in Internal Affairs and was already well on his way to reminding people why they weren't all that sad when he initially went missing when it was quietly revealed that he was also working for the United States Government.

Initially as Homeland Security and later as an agent of the Department of Evolved Affairs, he was responsible for a series of internal investigations into the functionality of Evolved officers and those working with them within the Department. He came to some unpopular conclusions before he formally resigned from his position with the NYPD, mostly involving his lack of faith in the ability of evo officers to overcome the conflict of interest that plagues the Evolved community.

Currently he's serving as Secretary Praeger's right hand man in the DoEA, where shortstaffing and a hardheaded desire to see things done right leads him to do a lot of his own footwork.

FAMILY (it comes last, even here): In early life he idolized his father, who worked as a cop on the streets of NYC pretty much from first job to retirement. His dad was a good guy but set tough standards and didn't accept bullshit in any way or form. As an only child (probably) Vincent learned early on that the cost benefit of lying was never worth it — maybe too well. Oliver didn't necessarily approve of his son moving up into investigation and took some affront to the idea that being a cop wasn't 'enough.' Probably for the best he didn't live to see him move on into IA — or god forbid, the Federal Government. He died of lung cancer while Vincent (who took being at the bedside harder than he lets on and still has his dad's old service pistol at home) was still in his thirties. His mother, Victoria, is still alive and doing fairly well in a suburb upstate where she moved to be closer to her sister. She knows better than to expect frequent visitation these days, in essentially the same boat that Tasha and Joanna have been for the last decade, but is generally proud and polite enough not to hold it against him (to his face.) In school he had hair, made excellent grades and tended to have serious, steady, long-term relationships. He played baseball and participated in track. Graduated college Magna Cum Laude and later finished off his Masters through odd-houred classes while he worked as a beat cop.

He met Joanna early in his policing career. Still a uniformed officer, he was involved in another relationship that he ended to pursue Jo after she caught his eye around the precinct for the second or third time. She was hot, intelligent, shorter than him capable and tough but not dykey. More importantly, she could give and take as well as he could without getting flustered. If they'd worked out in the long term they probably could have been some kind of political power couple, but they accidentally made a baby happen and if he resented the loss of his marriage more, that's probably where he'd say things started to slide downhill. He moved up a paygrade into investigation, Tasha was born and Joanna finished school. As quietly enthralled as he was by the idea of being a father to this perfect squirming pink thing, there seemed to be a direct correlation between how busy he was and the rate she was growing up. Sooner rather than later he started to get frustrated with how little time he was able to spend with his wife or his daughter, what with Joanna fully occupied with her burgeoning career and him with his. They fought. They stopped sleeping together. Then they fought about that. Quietly and behind closed doors, but that kind of tension tended to stick with him, especially at the ends of days where he was working off four or five hours of sleep.

As much as he loved Tasha and wanted to teach her and play with her and take stupid pictures of her to show to people and get her interested in his interests so she'd be awesome and badass and smart, when frustration turned over into anger at a situation that didn't look like it was going to be resolved he started to close himself off. That is, after realizing that he would never be as awesome a dad as his dad was to him, unaccustomed to failure, he turned his back on the issue and stopped trying. The same would soon become true of his marriage. He and Joanna filed for divorce on terse but otherwise okay terms. After eight years, they've both moved well on despite not having remarried and are capable of carrying on polite conversation. As for Tasha, now that he's started meeting active resistance to even his most basic fatherly obligations (like making sure she doesn't die in a terrorist bomb plot where she is the bomber) he's struggling to keep her alive and out of prison with his sense of humor, job, legality and sanity intact.

Psych Profile

A dick to most. Outwardly unflappable to most. Punctual, polite where he needs to be and legally upright. To most.

Vincent defines himself by his career, in which he has been successful, and not by his family, in which he has not been successful. He follows the law (often to the fortuitously vague letter) unless ordered to do otherwise, bends the law more often than he breaks it, and utilizes his knowledge of law and other people's misunderstanding of it to his advantage. He is unique among career policemen and federal agents: being thoroughly jaded has not lured him into complacence or corruption.

Unshakably confident in his own intelligence and capability as a federal agent, he is unlikely to be deliberately riled in a confrontation unless it's somehow made personal enough to influence him. He has a temper that manifests in hard looks and scathing passive aggression more often than it does tangible anger, which makes really fighting with him almost as much of a pain in the ass as trying to fight with him when he's virtually an outside observer to his own confrontations.

He gets away with being arrogant because he is good at what he does. Also because he can fall to smoke if someone rounds on him.

The Constitution and the United States are very important to him. He is a patriot, more through action than voice. He will support what he believes is right and constitutionally right for the country and its people, evolved or no, and trusts the people he works with to do the same.

He is a failure as a husband and moreso as a father. He's firmly aware of this as much as he is aware of his own brilliance and ability to intimidate, little as he lets on.

Evolved Ability

Registered: Vincent's ability is sublimating into a vapor form that he's had enough practice with to be mostly efficient in its application, though accidents are bound to happen and unexpected stimuli like sudden loud noises or unanticipated impact can disturb his equilibrium and cause reflexive, instantaneous sublimation.

While still compactly condensed, visually he looks exactly the same as he would if he were solid, save that any swift movement or physical disturbance through his person (the swing of a hand, the passage of a bullet) would break up the illusion and drag a dark, smoky trail out in its wake same as it would through a fog or any other cloud of smoke or vapor. Once he's fallen completely away from that kind of odd faux-solid state, he is basically a person-sized cloud of sooty grey-black vapor that can condense, expand, move and reassemble itself back into human form at will. The less dense he is, the harder he is to visually detect in a room and the harder it is for him to communicate. While hollow speech seems to be an option in a mostly human-shaped assembly, if he's just a span of misty air he's not going to be whispering in anyone's ear. He cannot form himself into complex shapes beyond his default human one and a ghostly grey golem version of his self, but tends to flow fluidly in whatever direction he's aiming to go in, ophidian and elemental until he reconstitutes. He can move quickly in this state when he's gathered himself up, fleeting against existing air currents by force of will, but momentum is difficult to maintain and it's hard to dart more than a few feet at a time.

As a vapor he has no smell and feels faintly chilly but not damp, more like smoke than water. He does not have control over or interact with any form of vapor other than himself and does not require oxygen to breath. I imagine his perception would be similar to Rickham's when he lacks human sensory organs, relying upon the translation of vibrations to interpret his environment. Extreme temperatures hamper his ability to put himself back together again, as do high winds and physical interruptions that occur while he's condensing. Like a plane scratching a landing in poor weather, he'd have to try to find better conditions and start over again even though the process is almost instantaneous to the human eye.

Unregistered: Theoretically Vincent's ability is fairly harmless, but with a catch: he had a kind of fear re: trying to take other people with him. He has attempted it in the past and learned that it's possible, but is aware from experimentation with inanimate objects from back when he manifested that he runs a risk of "losing" parts of himself or the transportee in the process. Transportation of this nature requires physical contact. Size limit would be as much as he could carry, I guess - maybe one human being.

As far as potentially using it to unexpectedly remove the body parts of his enemies goes, this is a facet that Vincent has advertised to no one. Ever. Effectively making him (slightly!) a liar in terms of how he registered himself (and is registered as a Tier-1 accordingly.) As the gas form he takes on is somewhat based on sublimation (in this case of an unknown black compound with a naturally gaseous state at most earthly temperatures) the side effect of sudden unnatural division of a whole object is a veneer of rapidly sublimating nasty black ice that sizzles and hisses and is generally pretty unpleasant across the exposed cross section. Also, frequently, death.

In less violent application, this is a way for him to transport a single individual rapidly out of direct fire in event of emergency, etc. If exhausted or otherwise fucked up while attempting a large transport he would probably risk black ice errors in himself. A whole individual transported in this way senses the world as he does but is not able to steer.

"Did he say anything to you?"

"Yeah, that the world is coming to an end."

"…Did he say when?"

Appendices

Skills:

Law: He knows it well enough to use it deftly to his advantage. Do you know what “reasonable” means? It could be the difference between a firm grip at the elbow or a nightstick to the spine depending on how much of a threat you make of yourself. Especially when what's “threatening” is purely up to the “reasonable” discretion of the threatened.

Self-Defense: Vincent is apt at close combat but has no formal style. It's a combination of experience, various training courses over the years and vicious improvisation. He's built and in great shape as self-involved pricks often are but average in speed, relatively short and doesn't have good reach, so prefers to use his ability to maneuver into favorable grappling or disabling position to neutralize opposition without causing permanent harm. Unless causing permanent harm is “reasonable” in a given situation, obviously.

Self-Control: He doesn't rise to bait and rarely responds openly to teasing or threats. Even personal ones. Inwardly they might terrify him if they hit their mark, but he's unlikely to flinch and particularly knowledgeable enough about the law and how other people act around it not to cave to people bullshitting at him about their rights being violated. Which tends to happen a lot when you do what he does. Previously he has invited people to bring charges against him, even helpfully listing ones they might want to look into if they're interested in explaining to a courtroom why he might have been fondling their rights in the first place. This branches into his ability to lie directly or by omission without batting an eye. He's not a great actor. He just doesn't sweat under pressure and relies upon non-reaction to get him through.

Contacts: He has them. In the NYPD, in the federal government, in the Linderman Group, in the Ferrymen. In the Institute. In Phoenix. Intelligence of the kind he requires doesn't tend to fall into laps. Not all of them are cooperative. Sometimes he has leverage. Sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes he has to make his own.

Weapons: Vincent typically carries a 9mm semi-automatic in a shoulder holster and is a decent shot at the range you'd expect to participate in a firefight within. He's no sniper. He's pretty handy with a nightstick, though.

Manipulation: See: Contacts and Self-Control. His job depends on his ability to find out things, which sometimes involves getting people to talk to him who may not want to. With the government at his back, his ability to convince has increased somewhat from what it was when he was lowly IA. He can intimidate. He can make promises that will be kept. He can turn people on each other or offer them money or pardons or alibis. He can also bring pain if they trend towards non-compliance. Even physically. …If it's reasonable.

Bass Guitar: Vincent played bass in an amateur rock band while in university and off and on later through the course of his early career. He wasn't bad, either. Times being what they are, he doesn't really have time for it anymore, but his original instrument resides somewhere in his apartment and sees occasional use when he needs the distraction.

Gallery:

Trivia and Notes:

• Suffered extensive injuries/scarring as a result of an assassination attempt during a high profile Internal Affairs case with the NYPD in '08. Scar pattern is approximately thus but less tidy. Plastic surgery mostly corrected the mess that was made of the side of his head and his right hand, but he is deeply self-conscious about the rest. He also suffers from chronic pain and is usually medicated in some capacity to manage it.
• Interviewed for the April 2010 issue of PAUSE Magazine. His answers (and everyone else's) can be seen here.
• As it was originally registered, Vincent's ability was theoretically harmless (Tier-0) but his vapor form provided him enough potential to eavesdrop undetected on dangerous or otherwise sensitive information that he was officially listed as Tier-1. As a result of the information leak and reports of new, more violent aspects of his ability employed on November 8th, he's since been bumped up to Tier-3.