Clinton Barton

This page is about the Phase 2 incarnation of the character. For other uses, see Clinton Barton (disambiguation) or Hawkeye (disambiguation).

PHASE 2

Clinton Barton
File:ClintP2.jpg Portrayed by Stephen Amell
Codename:	Hawkeye
Affiliations:	NA
Birthdate:	December 6, 1986
Journal:	x_hawkeye
Player:	Cai

Former Agent of SHIELD, current Agent of SWORD, in-the-closet mutant, scientist with a white knight complex.

Details

Character Journal: I'm Only A Man With A Candle To Guide Me

Real Name: Clinton Barton

Codename: Hawkeye

Aliases: Clint, Barton

First Appearance: February 1, 2015

Date of Birth: December 6, 1986

Place of Birth: Poughkeepsie, NY

Citizenship: US

Relatives: Parents were Harold and Edith Barton, paternal grandparents were Clinton and Margaret Barton, all are now deceased. Has an older brother, Bernard (nicknamed Barney), that he keeps in touch with fairly regularly. Adoptive parents are Andre and Steve Kimura-Murdock, who currently live in Manhattan. Adoptive brother is Matt Murdock, Andre's biological nephew.

Education: Graduated high school from Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School. Attended MIT and received a BS in Nuclear Science & Engineering as well as a BS in Physics (double major for undergrad, his minors were Biology and Computer Science), an MS in Nuclear Science & Engineering with a focus in applied plasma physics, and a PhD in Computational & Systems Biology. Because of the number of advanced/college level courses Clint crammed into his high school years as well as his various high school and college summer courses, he managed his undergrad double majors in three years rather than the typical four. His MS and PhD both took two years.

Relationship Status: Single. Again. Dammit.

Occupation: Formerly an Agent of SHIELD, formerly an Agent of SWORD. Currently unemployed.

Team Affiliation: NA

Biography

Childhood

Clint was born the second son of a normal middle class family, his parents both hardworking and loving. Unfortunately, his mother passed away shortly after giving birth to him due to complications with the delivery. His brother, Bernard, was six years old at the time and, with the help of his grandparents, Clint and Barney managed to stay with their father while he worked two jobs to ensure they were adequately supported. However, when Clint was four, his father died in a car crash.

Shortly before his father’s death, Clint was diagnosed with colorblindness, though it didn't run in his family on either his mother or father’s side. Clint was too young to understand what was going on at the time and then his father was gone. His grandparents assumed custody of both the Barton boys and concerns about the cause of Clint's colorblindness shifted to the back burner as getting them moved into their grandparents' home and ready for school too precedence. Sadly, his grandfather passed away when Clint was six and his grandmother followed a year later. With no other family to take them in, Barney (aged 13) decided that it would be better for them to run away than be placed in foster care and potentially separated.

While making their way to New York City, the boys found a small traveling circus and Barney begged for work there rather than continuing to the city. Given his age, there wasn't much Barney could do, so both he and Clint worked as roustabouts. Shortly after their arrival it became apparent that both boys had an uncanny ability to hit whatever they happened to aim at with a variety of thrown objects. The boys quickly found themselves apprenticed to Jacques Duquesne (Swordsman) and Buck Chisholm (Trick Shot). In exchange for doing menial tasks and eventually assisting with their stage shows, the performers trained Barney in hand-to-hand fighting (which came in handy for tumbling as well as self defense) and archery.

Barney passed on some of the skills he learned to Clint, who took to archery like a fish to water and almost never missed a shot. Jacques and Buck were essentially good men, though they did take advantage of the free labor the boys provided and tended toward anger when drinking. Barney took the brunt of whatever violence the men directed toward them while intoxicated. As he got older, Clint began taking part more in the stage shows and also started learning directly from Buck, who actually gave him a battered bow and quiver for his tenth birthday.

This mostly satisfactory, school-less life came to an end when Clint was eleven. The circus attracted the attention of the authorities near New York City for allegedly cheating patrons as well as gambling and selling drugs. When the police raided the circus and found the young boys, they snapped the brothers up and placed them in Child Protective Custody before moving Clint into foster care.

Movin' On Up

Placed with Steve and Andre Kimura-Murdock in Manhattan, Clint found himself enrolled in school for the first time in four years and woefully behind. He kept in close touch with Barney, who went to a group home after aging out of foster care, then back on the road with the circus. Clint worked hard in school, focusing on studying rather than the fact that he seemed to be the odd one out because of his remedial courses. Steve and Andre enrolled him in a self-defense classes as well as deciding to let him continue with his archery training.

Aside from the fact that he attended summer school each year, middle school was uneventful for Clint socially, though it allowed him to figure out which subjects he particularly enjoyed and he excelled in Math and Science. Social Studies bored him and he could get through Language Arts, but it wasn't his favorite class. While his colorblindness didn't automatically exclude him from art related classes (in fact, he took a sculpting class purely for the credit requirement), it did make art more difficult for him.

It had essentially no impact on his participation in PE, though. He did well, particularly enjoying games like dodge ball, since he almost never missed hitting people on the opposing team. He also wound up holding the record for rope climbing every year and, though it wasn't allowed, could more often than not be found in one of the trees in the courtyard where the kids could eat lunch if the kids were given free time outside. Since he usually read rather than causing trouble and he never encouraged others to follow him up into the branches, his teachers didn't see any particular reason to scold him – he never fell.

When he was fourteen, Andre was notified that his younger brother, Jonathon Murdock, had been killed. CPS asked if he and his partner would take in his nephew, Matthew. They quickly agreed and Clint found himself with a younger brother.

Gettin' that Education

His high school years were also uneventful, for the most part. Having received high scores on his testing in middle school, Clint was allowed to take more advanced math and science classes. He eventually took all the courses in those subjects available at his high school and began taking college level classes at Columbia. Upon graduating high school as class Valedictorian, Clint attended MIT for both undergrad and graduate studies. He received his PhD in 2012 and was quickly recruited by SHIELD, who'd been monitoring his academic progress. During the screening process prior to being officially admitted to the basic training program, one of the doctors discovered Clint possessed the x-gene. Further testing determined that it was not dormant and, in fact, Clint's extreme visual acuity as well as his reflexes and spatial awareness/exteroception were linked to his genetic mutation.

Duckin' into the Closet

The doctor informed Clint of her discovery and reported her findings to Supervisory Special Agent Coulson, who took the information to Director Fury. Between the two of them they decided that Clint's abilities and skill set made him a valuable asset and, rather than flagging him as a mutant, they allowed him to continue with SHIELD basic training. Upon completion of the program, they moved him into SWORD, where his interest in science and technology was quickly put to use. He worked closely with Dr. Jane Foster, attempting to figure out scientifically how the Bifrost Bridge was possible and how it functioned. He even got to meet Thor, finding the demigod to be generally a nice guy.

After the events of January 2015 and M-Day, Clint has watched the tension in his team increase dramatically. People he typically gets along with have begun to irritate him as they spout anti-mutant sentiments with more and more frequency. The vitriol is getting worse the longer he stays and he's not only dissatisfied with his work environment but also worried that his status as a mutant might somehow be revealed.

Leavin' It All Behind

After an altercation with his partner at SWORD and attempting to convince the mysterious vigilante behind a series of 'accidents' that befell various anti-mutant groups and people, Clint got shipped to Barrow, Alaska to inventory and guard a SHIELD/SWORD storage facility. While there, he discovered a mysterious tube, seemingly self-powered, that had been stored there for over a decade. Interest piqued, he began studying it in his spare time.

SHIELD and SWORD's vacation policies changed to use-it-or-lose-it, though, and so Clint returned to NYC to hang out with his brother, Matt. While there, he met Kitty Pryde in the city, found out he got along remarkably well with Warren Worthington, celebrated Easter with his family, met a girl, and managed to agree to supply better gear to Miles Morales and his Spider-Man counterpart. Fortuitously, he met Clarice Ferguson after a run, a fact that came in handy when, after actually giving the Spider-Men their gear, he was sent back to Alaska.

Due to some minor shift swapping, Clint was the agent at the warehouse in Barrow when Susan Storm broke in, intent on stealing the very tube that had captured Clint's interest. While they bickered, the power surges that had been occurring more and more frequently within the tube reached their peak and the tube disgorged a mysterious man. Violently aggressive, the man attacked both Clint and Sue, forcing them to defend themselves. Sue was knocked unconscious when the man broke through one of her force fields, leaving Clint to try to take him down on his own. Luckily, the man passed out before managing to do more than badly bruise Clint, so the agent called Clarice for an assist, cleaned up the warehouse as best he could, phoned in for a SHIELD clean-up crew, and quit his job at SWORD.

Physical Characteristics

Height: 6'3"

Weight: 230lbs

Eyes: Blue

Hair: Brown

Other Features: Several scars on his torso received during SHIELD and SWORD missions.

Powers

Enhanced Eyesight: Right, so. Clint’s eye parts. They [still] work better than yours. (Frito dared me to put those as the opening lines of his powers section, that is totally her fault.)

More specifically, he has enhanced fovea – his are more like a bird of prey’s, which means he can focus better, more clearly, and on smaller things. He has no blind spot – his optic disc connects from behind, like a squid’s. Clint’s eye muscles are also more advanced than your average human’s in that the outer ones are more efficient and unconnected, so he can move his eyes independently of one another, and the internal ones allow him to focus better.

In addition, the rods and cones in Clint’s eyes (the specialized cells responsible for normal vision) are very different from a baseline human’s. While a regular human has around 150 million rod cells in his/her retinas, Clint has over 400 million, vastly increasing his visual acuity. He also has fewer cones than the average human, causing him to see mostly in black and white, increasing his visual contrast, and allowing him to better see “what’s real and what’s not.” For instance, he can see through a two-way mirror.

Clint’s pupils and irises react faster to light than a baseline human’s, meaning he doesn't get light dazzled nearly as much/easily as others – a flash bang grenade would do it, as would a laser pen shone directly into his eyes, but probably not much else. Last, but certainly not least, Clint’s eyes have nictating membranes, so he doesn't have to blink nearly as often as others and he doesn't have to close his eyes when he’s under water. Clint’s eyesight is 20/2 – what most people can see clearly at 2 feet, he can see clearly at 20.

Increased Agility: Clint has enhanced reflexes, allowing him a much faster reaction time than most others. For instance, he couldn't dodge a bullet, but he could see someone turning a gun toward him and move before they fired the weapon much more quickly than your average person. These reflexes tie into his ability to fire arrows (or other objects, if necessary) in quick succession. He's able to utilize this facet of his mutation particularly well during hand-to-hand combat.

Exteroception: Clint has a very strong sense of proprioception – the perception of his own position and the ability to detect externally imposed passive motion (both angular and linear), as well as muscle memory and hand-eye coordination. This, along with his extreme visual acuity, also gives him an inhuman exteroceptive sense, or perception of the world beyond his own body. Like a bird of prey, he is exceptionally strong at detecting movement, even of very small things at a distance. This means that like others (Artie, Scott), he's off the charts on 'spatial awareness' tests. Thus, his aim with ranged weapons (either a bow or improvised projectiles) is more or less perfect unless impaired by some outside factor and hand-to-hand combat comes fairly naturally to him in a physical sense. He’s able to dodge things and block moves, for example, but he would need to study tactics and practice a great deal to build up true muscle memory. Given enough experiential data, he can even compensate for things such as magnetic fields or extreme gravitation imposed by other mutant powers.

Equipment

A composite bow that he's tinkered with and tweaked a lot since he first got it, a specially designed quiver, and personally designed arrows.

Trivia

• Loves black and white movies.
• Will eat Chinese no matter the time of day, day of the week, or month of the year.
• Designed the billy club Matt Murdock uses for his nighttime escapades and got him his body armor.
• Pulls some strings to get Miles Morales and his Spider-Man counterpart new suits/body armor.
• Tinkers with and engineers weapons, particularly arrows.
• Periodically goes out drinking with Thor.

External Links

x_communication posts by tag

x_journal posts by tag

x_logs posts by tag

Plots

2015

The Nowhere King

Meta

Player: Cai

E-mail:

AIM: writteninsable

Player Icon Base: Stephen Amell

Meta Trivia

Cai played Clint during XP's Phase 1, then decided to reapp him to make him a little closer to his canon history.