Name: Juno Steel Door: Right - He who hesitates is lost. Canon: The Penumbra Podcast Canon Point: end of Season 2 Age: 38 Appearance: here; missing his right eye, often wears eyepatch. History: herePersonality: Reckless
“Think of me as the price tag, Nureyev. A free shot at the new world.”
For a highly-trained individual, Juno's patience is sometimes non-existent. His recklessness is partly born of his self-destructive habits, but it's also a feature of his investigative style. He takes chances, he lies, he gambles with plans and when it blows up in his face, he gets a chance to feel guilty for all of it. Juno readily gets himself stabbed, shot, maimed, and beaten in the line of duty, often because his fast-and-loose planning leaves him no other options or because he can't be bothered to wait to fully suss out a situation or, ultimately, because he doesn't care about his own safety. At one point, Juno seals himself in a room with an unknown weapon and an enemy, working on a hunch that he will survive when the weapon goes off and apparently willing to accept the fact that he might not if he's wrong. He even throws himself into traffic in an attempt to rescue a client's cat because that's the last bid he has left and, damnit, he is not losing another lead. He is not failing to solve a case because of a little thing like crosswalks and traffic lights. In another instance, Juno withholds information from a police officer he's working a sting with - important information, like the fact that he doesn't have nearly as much intel as he suggested he did to get the cop to work with him. In the same night, Juno firmly believes that a person they see is somehow linked to the heist they're trying to stop. He loses his cop partner to get a drop on the.... security guard. Because of Juno's impatience, the guard is ultimately killed by the thieves. If Juno had just waited, maybe it wouldn't have cost someone else's life. Don't worry, he'll beat himself up about that one for a good long time. He also lets someone implant new technology into his head because he is desperate to have his eyesight back to normal rather than trying to train himself to shoot with his new vision. It doesn't go well.
Self-Destructive
"You try take it all on yourself because you don't care if you get hurt and one day it's going to kill you or worse.”
Juno's self-destructive streak feeds his reckless behavior, but he doesn't always turn that energy outward. When he loses himself in depressive spirals, Juno finds himself at the bottom of any bottle he can get his hands on, drinking until he passes out... a nasty habit he learned from his mother. He hates that. For most of season 1 and 2, he doesn't have any regard for his own safety and well-being and frequently sabotages his relationships with his behavior - sometimes on purpose. He tells himself they deserve better, or he's doing it to keep himself from hurting them, or some other cock-and-bull reason to keep his I-go-it-alone approach to life. And for as much as Juno wants to hope for a better world, he keeps very little of that hope for himself. He walks away from Peter Nureyev and dives back into Hyperion City rather than leaving it all behind for a man he cares about. Ultimately, up through the tail end of the second season, Juno just doesn't believe that he deserves to be happy. His survivor's guilt, his depression, his trauma all tangle together in a knot he'd rather risk his life running away from rather than untangle it. Because maybe that knot is the only thing still holding him together. It's only at the end of the second season that Juno starts making an attempt to live.
Idealistic
“But that means that evil is sometimes just someone trying to prove to the world that they mean something. Or trying to prove it to themselves, maybe.”
Juno wants to "do good," even if he has no idea what that ultimately looks like. He wants so badly to be a hero, to make up for all of his deficiencies, to make sure that no one else is hurt the way he's been hurt, and to make his life worth something. If he can just do enough good, that might balance the scales... or put a few more grains of sand on the right side. While idealism can be a positive trait - it does drive Juno to help people, to do good things - in his case it's also problematic. He has to be better than the bad guys, he holds himself to impossible standards and when anything goes wrong, he immediately believes that it's because of him: something he missed, something he did wrong. It doesn't matter how small his influence might have been, it's still his fault because he is supposed to be doing good. The guilt he carries is immense. And the only time Juno really allows himself to feel like he's worthwhile is when he thinks he's actively doing something to help people. But that pedestal is high and narrow, and Hyperion City has a pretty stiff breeze: he falls more often than he stands, and he ends up at the bottom of everything wondering if it's even worth trying to get up. In trying to live up to his ideals, to what he thinks he's worth or what the world could be, Juno throws himself into danger "for even a quarter chance of doing something good." No matter how bad the odds, he feels like he has to try. He has to. His idealism also leads him to trust people he shouldn't and Juno ends up dragged into a grand conspiracy that ultimately disillusions him further and leads to him leaving the city he's lived in his entire life.
Intelligent
“Excellent job, Mr. Steel! You’ve passed your Reasoning exam with flying colors!”
For all his self-deprecation, Juno Steel is intelligent, observant, and insightful when he wants to be. He is a well-known private eye and he has high-end clientele that hire him to investigate everything from murders to cat theft to political sabotage. He is good at identifying and following up on missing details and small clues and hunches, and he's usually right. He has both big picture and narrow focus thinking and he can even usually get those two to work together, stringing together important details to see the larger effort at work. This can take him longer if he doesn't want to believe the outcome (as with Ramses O'Flaherty's deception), but he gets there in the end. He can also perform well under pressure, as he has no trouble working through the series of tests a serial killer known as The Proctor puts him through, including complex word problems and riddles, despite having been poisoned and working under the threat of his own death and his friend's.
Loyal
“Because no matter how angry I am... I still trust him.”
Once Juno decides that someone is worth his time, or once they manage to weasel their way into his feelings, he will go to the mat for them. Despite his tendency to be self-centered, he still cares deeply once he lets himself do it. Juno is protective of his childhood friends, Mick Mercury and Sasha Wire (even if Sasha hardly needs it), and when they are trapped together, he does what he can (in a self-sacrificing way) to try to keep them safe. He spends an entire season working for a man he barely knows - Ramses O'Flaherty - because he believes in his vision. It doesn't matter that Ramses keeps things from him or constantly puts him in danger with little information to work with, Juno doesn't give up until his perception of the man is completely shattered. When he joins the Arikuno crime family, he calls them his family, and he works hard to pull his weight and to protect them however he can, no matter how much various members of the family piss him off (looking at you, Vespa). And he is loyal to Peter Nureyev, loving him no matter what fears and doubts come between them. His intentions are good, even his methods are occasionally questionable. Powers and Abilities: Juno is a renowned sharpshooter, having won the sharpshooting contest for the HCPD three years in a row. Several people have made remarks on him being able to make shots otherwise thought to be "impossible." Inventory: + laser gun + storage device with several recorded drama streams + letter from Peter Nureyev Samples: texting; action |
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