6-4 260 A large body ripped with muscle accents his strong looking African American features. He has a pronounced chin and hair wrapped in corn rows on top of his head.
It's going to be hard for me to get into the mindset of V1, I can already tell.
Marcus was apparently thrown into the game by the terrorists for the sole purpose of killing people, because of how jacked he is. Competing in a sports league a whole five years older than you when you're a child is no small feat, and with daily workouts that last for a whole five hours a day, it's no surprise that this guy is a manly man. Despite this, however, he has the social weakness of a stutter and a lisp, which, if he needs to communicate, makes it somewhat difficult to do so. The detail here is pretty interesting; even if his profile says nothing about his personality, the stammer gives the immediate impression that this guy is a gentle giant kind of character. The fact that he gets assigned a paper fan is also amusing, specifically because it serves to undermine the strength he has.
This huge guy starts off his Island adventure by managing to conceal himself in the bushes. He sneaks up to the front door of the Small House and knocks, a grin on his face. Adam Dodd, River Garrarty, and Hawley Faust are inside, hanging around and shooting the shit. They peer out the window and basically shit themselves over how fucking jacked this guy is, trying to prepare themselves for this encounter.
Marcus just kinda charges through the door like a rhino.
Chiiiill.
Instead of talking, he communicates by writing on a wrist he thinks is broken. Interesting way to get around the stutter, but the fact that he's choosing to communicate here contradicts the whole sadistic thing from before. While Hawley fixes up Marcus' hand and Adam goes for a walk where he decides to become a nature enthusiast, Marcus thinks back to seventh grade, and we get to read a small memory about a time he was bullied by other students for not being able to say the word "please" correctly. He's snapped out of this whole dream sequence deal by Hawley, and they get to fixing up the hand. He sits idle for around a page while this other group of three, including a girl Adam Dodd apparently likes named Amanda, all strut into the cabin, Adam having been the welcoming party. Madelaine and David are the other two members, Amanda's closest island friend and the bodyguard, respectively. Unable to use his hand, Marcus speaks to introduce himself, and is instantly-
"Why are you stuttering? Do you fear me? There is no reason to."
-kind of insulted by David. That said, Marcus doesn't take it to heart. When the announcements come on, he's the first to suggest they move, choosing to write despite the pain. While Adam and Amanda snog outside and Adam gets the Andrew-Lipson-Gets-Struck-By-Lightning call, River runs into the woods hysterically and DZ's himself. Adam kind of freaks out and leaves as well, though not as to run into a DZ. While all this happens and the group panics about what to do, Marcus is silent. He is reserved. Meditative.
This big guy must have a resting heart rate of, like, 40.
This girl named Devi Satome walks over to the door looking for help. She is turned away. Marcus does not move. He is still. He feasts on the dewdrops. He subsists off of water in the air. He may have spent five hours a day training, and like more time practicing and playing sports, but little does everyone know that he is also a meditation master.
I mean, I prefer to think he is. If he can sit through all of this, then he MUST be, right?
They leave the house, Marcus included, and get confused over where to go next. Marcus is the voice of reason, or rather, the words of reason, as he takes the pad of paper and pencil with him and writes to the group about courses of action. They decide to make their way to the lighthouse - and the next thread - after all, and arrive just in time to see the aftermath of Blaine Eno butchering someone.
MARCUS WAS ANGRY.
So naturally, because of how angry he is, Marcus walks up to try and befriend the guy, leaving the rest of the group bewildered. Of course, this was a half-baked ruse to try and get Blaine to open up, testing the waters of his mental state. Blaine retreats, obviously not in a state to want any more friends, and Marcus announces his real intention - to strike Blaine down. Hawley manages to get him to stand down, verbally, and the group cuts their losses and leaves. This is a decently tense scene, without the earlier context of what happened in the thread before, and sets up Marcus pretty well at odds with the group, in a sense. He ends the thread by writing them all a message about how bad of a move that was as they walk away, and the group deliberates on this as they walk off.
Strangely, in between threads, Marcus gets cut off from the rest of the group and is lost in the woods on the way to the hospital. This is probably highlighted in the thread of wherever the hell the rest of the group went, and they likely freak out over somehow managing to lose track of a giant. He winds up in the woods, finding a guy named Cody Jenson. Actually, it'd be a little more fitting to say that Cody Jensen finds him, as he is caught in a trap and then beaten with a stick. Eventually, Marcus manages to break free, running to the river all bloody and sick and tired, somehow managing to run into Amanda and Madelaine again. Both are in bad shape, so they point Marcus to Hawley, just up ahead.
Marcus is gone for the next two or so pages, and doesn't come back until way after Blaine Eno sneaks up on the girls, and Adam Dodd comes out of the bushes to Big Damn Heroes the whole shebang. While Amanda and Adam have a touching reunion, and Hawley comes back, and this weird Callum kid mistakes one of the girls for his own girlfriend, Marcus is bleeding out in the bushes. When this new Callum kid enters the scene, though, he starts to beg for help, because the way he sees it he's too likely to be abandoned without getting help, or something. It's unclear. The girls (and Callum) tend to Marcus while Hawley patches Adam up, or something, giving him Morphine - and apparently there's some speech here that's funny or something, but I'm reading for Marcus, not for Dodd - while this other girl, Nanami, from the same middle school as Madelaine, in Japan, (I think? I have no idea what the deal is with all the schools in this game tbh) confronts the group. Marcus is the voice of reason again, using a combination of his voice and the pad of paper to get the trigger happy teenagers - mostly David - to stand down.
This works on David, but not on Adam. As Nanami breaks the fuck down over meeting her "traitor" childhood friend, Adam calls her on her crybaby bullshit, and basically destabilizes what little peace there was left. Nanami just slaps him, though, and it's laughed off. Callum runs off into the distance to find his real girlfriend after hearing a scream. It's really just business as usual up to this point. Marcus raises the point that if they're going to get moving, they might as well set up a base camp and get the drop on some people, people such as Cody, because they're bad and stuff, or something. The group's collective response is "yeah sure whatever" and Madelaine is lead away from the group to talk alone by Nanami. Nanami shoots Madelaine, and Marcus, with regained strength, sprints over to see what's going on.
Everyone runs over to find Madelaine still alive, but held at gunpoint. Marcus gets the group to surround Nanami, making sure she can't escape, while she waxes poetic about her childhood with Madelaine. Nanami is distracted by the group - and I think getting shot at some point, can't make out who does it, though - and Madelaine jumps to her feet and shoots Nanami one last time. Instantly, Madelaine regrets her decision, and starts screaming for them to patch up Nanami. There isn't much they can do. Nanami dies in Madelaine's arms. It's worth noting, at this point, that Marcus has been absent for around another page, his presence implied but not enforced. As you've probably noticed, this is sort of a habit of his. When he does come back, it's to take a good look at the corpse, and throw up. Adam goes over to make sure that he's okay - he isn't - while Amanda tries to get through to Madelaine, who can't talk because she's been shocked into silence. Hawley coats one of Marcus' more profusely bleeding wounds with antibiotics, but everyone silently knows it probably won't be enough to save this man.
Marcus has also been concussed, badly. He slumps down on the ground, and drifts off into sleep. The rest of the group mistakes this essentially-just-drifting-out-of-consciousness for Marcus' meditative prowess bringing him back into the astral again (read: he just needs some sleep, guys!) and pays him no mind while Adam gives a galvanizing speech to get the group back on their feet again. Another group wanders into the thread, made up of Heather, Fred, and a Jeremy of some nondescript background. The last thing this thread needs is more overcrowding, but here it is! We get it anyway! Hell, this breaks out into a gunfight which makes everything just all that much more muddy, and two other kids - both handled by the same guy who handles David - come in, and do nothing either. Heather's group, after firing a few shots off, leaves, and so do David's handler's kids. The gunfight is a tidal wave. It sweeps through, destroying much in its path, but just as quickly recedes from the shore. Hawley has internal bleeding, David has external bleeding, and Marcus is still, elsewhere, slowly slipping into a coma. Hawley dies, the medic being killed by one of the few injuries he was unable to treat.
The group has time to bury him and give something approaching a service before they realize that Marcus has been oddly quiet. Amanda comes out of nowhere with impressive knowledge of how comas work, and Adam decides the best course of action is to put him down.
Which, after some deliberation, he does. Shoots him, he does. Kills him, he does.
End the story, he does.
I don't know if I'd recommend Marcus on his own. Three out of four threads you'll get by reading Hawley Faust, two out of four you'll get by reading Adam Dodd, and the remaining one thread you'll get with Cody Jensen. I can't speak to any of those character's quality - though I really liked Hawley, from what I saw of him - but in my opinion, because of how long Marcus spends not doing anything, he's best read as a supplement to other character's journeys.
