Davey Roche

Birth and early life[]

Born near Galway and raised between Britain and Ireland by Traveller kin, Davey made a living from very young by bareknuckle boxing.

Only as he turned twenty did Davey realise the handicap his lack of formal education placed him under, and from there on he was a changed man in many ways. His pre-fight routine found him with a book (originally, and again later, Dr. Seuss) in his hand, and on one famous occasion he suffered a knockdown because a fan held up a poster with a Seuss picture on it, and he was distracted by trying to place which story it was from.

Turning point[]

This brutal lifestyle, however, had severe and built-in limits, and even by twenty-one he was feeling the wear-and-tear on his body from his way of earning a living. Known to local police forces wherever his people regularly roamed, Davey found he had increasing difficulty feeling that this life was his - too many other people controlled too many elements of it. So, he decided to have one last fight for a big payday, then retire. Unfortunately, his Uncle Shadrack, who was nominally his manager, and actively the Head of the Family, had arranged an even bigger one by fixing it for Davey to lose, and so he would clean up with the bookies. Davey was no dummy, and merely gargled with the 'energy drink' his uncle brought him, spitting most of it out the moment the older man was out of sight. However, it did slow him enough that he took a terrible beating, before eventually, and to Shadrack's disgust, emerging victorious.

Changing circumstances[]

The money, sadly, never made it as far as his caravan, Shadrack having arranged for him to be waylaid by a group of the lads with lead pipes, the same lads who'd been in with Shadrack on the scam. The cash, covered in Davey's blood, was pulled off his body, and his presumed corpse rolled into the canal. He floated downstream, and was pulled out by a woman living on a houseboat. The lady's name was Diane Ricken, and she made no judgments about the lad she rescued, having in a past life of her own been a 'lady of the night'. She learned a couple of valuable secrets in that trade, and had parlayed them into a modest nest egg, which funded her frugal lifestyle, and left her free to exist off the radar. She took in the half-broken zombie who had drifted up against her boat, and nursed him back to health. She was amazed by his appetite for the minimalist library she had rescued from her former existence, and found that he asked questions which pushed her well outside her 'comfort zone' in philosophical terms. She borrowed books from the local library, and the ones on information technology in particular lit a fire under her houseguest. He employed, without her knowledge, skills honed across the British Isles to break into a local bookie's (one of the ones with whom Shadrack had placed his bet), and 'liberated' a laptop and peripherals. With access to the Internet, Davey devoured Wikipedia and every other general information site he could access, read an average of four books a day, and expanded his knowledge base by leaps and bounds. In eight months he acquired functional French, German and Spanish, alongside extreme IT skills and a grounding in History, Geography and the basic Sciences. Diane, having put him to work, once he was well, tending the vegetable plot next to the houseboat, and selling the produce, decided he couldn't develop any further with her, and concluded that she should call in an old favour.

A whole new life[]

One of her 'clients' in her past life was still enough of a name in politics to get Davey an interview with Secret Service HR, and they immediately saw his potential. At age twenty-two, Davey Roche ceased to exist, disappearing into the bowels of the Vauxhall building, his records redacted to show that there was a police report of his death some ten months earlier, on the night of the fight. For four years he strove to master everything MI6 could teach him, on every front, physical, mental, psychological and spiritual, and emerged with barehand fighting skills second to none. His clinical detachment with regard to killing has made him the go-to guy in a number of situations where weapons on an agent were not an option, and he has been used above all in Asia, being fluent in Cantonese, Japanese, Mandarin, Vietnamese and Korean, and due to his relatively short stature, not standing out excessively in crowds in that region.

He is a techie of the highest order, able to make field repairs and jerry-rig communications on a near-MacGyver level. Davey has on occasion even foregone a questionable kill out of respect for an opponent's tech skills. He has considered bankrupting Shadrack through the Internet, and even got as far as writing half a program. It is suspected by his superiors that he 'undersells' his kill count on the vast majority of missions, and this is unquestionably so, as he often encompasses 'moral' side missions, authorised on the nod by Whitehall bigwigs. Davey figures he's going to have an array of markers to call in when he tires of field work.

Davey was put through military training and fast-tracked into 22 SAS, where he currently hold the (Reserves) rank of Captain. He is 0026 for MI6. He now has an office, which he tries to visit at least once in a w-hile.

Physique[]

Davey is 5' 8" (173 cm) and 204 lb (93 kg). He is extremely powerfully built throughout his body and tremendously strong, with a 460 lb benchpress without a bench shirt (raw/no wraps), 620 lb squat (no wraps) and an 810 lb deadlift (no wraps), giving him 1,890 lb total. He shows the marks of his many bareknuckle boxing bouts in an array of scars - although the worst of those, obviously, come from his 'mugging'.

Quirks[]

Since joining MI6 Davey hasn't had a single physical relationship which wasn't part of his cover for some assignment.
Dislikes Kevlar - or any body armour - and will only wear it if so ordered directly.
Has been permitted to keep some extremely valuable trophies of successful missions.
Still puts a notch inside his locker door in the gym for every successful mission.