#gavinclevine

Rasul’s world is destroyed with the Massacre. Seeing their mother brutally murdered, hiding beneath the floorboards and wasting three days waiting for their father to show up breaks something in him.

This moment unleashes a rage that no nine year-old should feel, but feel it he does. This hatred only burns stronger when Samina decides to become a Marine.

Her explanation tempers him with patience, same patience she is taking on the road of their revenge. They need names, locations, identities. They also need food, water and shelter, all the things Marine employ will get.

Might as well make use of the vermin.

As Samina begins her training and sends the proceeds back to him, he begins to experiment with his Record in secret. He’s seen the techniques, but is unsure how to access or use them.

With great determination, spite and copious amounts of meditation - plus a good number of accidents - Rasul learns to Delegate. This allows him and Samina to communicate much more easily, official channels being monitored.

This also opens his world up to other people’s secrets. Marines’ secrets, Pirates’ secrets, Nobles’ secrets. Rasul is quick to see potential there.

At first he sends Delegates to listen, to see and bring the information back to him; the better he gets the bigger of a name he makes for himself. Samina is worried, but also strangely proud - she cannot expect him to do nothing while she’s out making waves.

The more he sees, the angrier he gets and soon begins to use his Delegates in order to communicate with people who might want to get in on his game, to gather his own informants. He picks the downtrodden, the vengeful, the ostracized, he pretends to be a Devil Fruit user to hide his Record use.

He asks for only a spot of their skin as surface for a Starling tattoo in return for their vengeance on who ever has wronged them. The older he gets the more his net grows - slaves, prostitutes, servants - and the more he’s able to offer - safety, comfort, food, shelter, money, protection - the more infamous he becomes.

None know his face, for most only ever see a Delegate Starling.

Majority of his informants are women in unfortunate circumstances, great number of whom consider him a ‘sweet boy’.

His Sky Islander ancestry shows in a row of feathers sprouting wrist to elbow in a single smooth line.

He holds a hatred for men due to his mother’s murderers being a bunch of sexist pigs, but also because his father never showed up; and both he and Samina knew he could.