Carlos Domingo

Carlito 2091

## Background

Growing up, Carlos never would’ve thought to describe himself or his family living situation as poor; They always had plenty of really good food to eat, his parents always gave him new clothes, and he had a warm bed to sleep in. He never thought that the constant sound of gunfire, the constant lingering smell of cigarettes in the air, or the flashy men that walked the neighbourhood with guns were anything beyond the realm of normal. Sure, there were times where he would go hungry for a little while because his mom gave the last of their leftovers to that family of seven from down the street, but it was just another part of life in Vista Del Ray.

Growing up in the poorest part of Heywood was easier with parents like his. Having a high ranking Valentino like Marcus Santiago as a father meant Carlos had plenty of people taking care of him, and even more watching out for him. Carlos could have been left alone with just about any of the numerous gang members that loitered and patrolled the streets and nobody would ever let him even get a scrape on his knee because he was Marcus’s boy.

Carlos was used to the criminal element within the neighborhood because people passed through his door on a fairly regular basis either looking for his dad to discuss business or to get patched up by his mother: Belicia Domingo was once a MedTech that worked with Biotechnica and was on the path to being a trauma team technician, but unfortunately she became a casualty in a corporate sabotage and ended up getting blacklisted and all of her assets repossessed. Vista Del Ray was the only place she could afford and being the only serviceable doctor made for a nice way to earn a living. She would initially just treat the homeless and the children, but soon her clientel began to expand when more people would come to her for help. She met Marcus when he had come to her bleeding from several gunshot wounds, managing to make her laugh and gain her interest with his hard-headed nature, growing sweet on him and beginning to treat the local gangsters because of her fondness for him.

When Carlos wasn’t playing outside with the other kids, he spent most of his time with his mother. His father was always out and about “putting in work” which left Belicia with a lot of time left on her own dealing with patients that rarely had the decency to give her a bit of warning before showing up. Ever since he was about seven years old, Carlos had been his mother’s little medical assistant. There weren’t many schools nearby and Belicia refused to raise a fool. She had always kept him busy with quizzes, books, and chores in order to keep his hands from getting too idle. He knew where all of her tools were and could follow instructions, which him surprisingly useful despite his young age. He also did a nice job keeping people relaxed and distracted, as his numerous questions to the local Valentinos kept their minds off the discomfort that comes with need to be stitched up from one reason or another.

His mom’s influence caused some minor friction between him and his dad as he got older, specifically when he was nearly approaching 10 years old. His dad didn’t mind his son being a bookworm, he could overlook the instances of panic and hiding whenever he heard gunfire, but what he couldn’t stand was the thought of his son becoming a coward. He’d gotten into an argument with some boys around his age that resulted in him getting punched in the face, after which he ran him crying to his mother with a black eye. While Belicia wanted to clean up and comfort the boy, it took all of Marcus’s self-control not to take off his belt and send Carlos back outside with either a dry face or a tanned hide. He could hear them arguing from his room, Marcus expressing that Belicia was making him too soft with the way she babied him, and it was time that Carlos learned to defend himself. He wasn’t sure exactly what else was said in the discussion, but he found himself being brought with his dad out of the house a lot more often.

His main responsibility was to observe and learn while Marcus would handle business with his associates and underlings, often with his uncle Miguel by his side, whispering into his ear while explaining what was going on. When Carlos expressed interest in something, it was usually Miguel feeding the fascination by answering the questions. He bonded with his father and uncle when they took him to watch the gang participate in street races and car shows. There was something about the loud engines, golden rims, and eye-catching paintjobs that awakened the primal urge in just about every little boy that sent them into a car-phase. Only, rather than stop at the aesthetic appreciation and knowledge that cars go fast, Carlos wanted to understand how they went fast. Thankfully, there were plenty of car enthusiasts that Miguel knew who would be happy to pass on their knowledge to a willing audience since their wives or girlfriends typically weren't interested in it.

When he had the free time, Marcus had gotten a set of boxing gloves and started to teach Carlos how to hold his own in a fight. Given that he was arguably the best brawler in the gang, there wasn’t anyone better suited to show Carlos the ropes. He wasn’t an easy teacher by any mens and Carlos had gotten the wind knocked out of him  or his bell rang more times than he could count, but his dad kept insisting that when he was tired of getting hurt he would learn to block or dodge. As time went by, Marcus saw some improvement in his boy. He started to fight back more instead of just run or shield himself when they practiced, he was spending more time with men instead of clinging to his mother’s leg, and he heard Carlos even starting to talk more like him and the other adults. If he kept this up he would be a real man in no time. Unfortunately, Marcus wouldn’t exactly be present to see it.

One day when Marcus was twelve, the Valentinos had been passed a job that was bigger than anything they’d had in a while. It would essentially be a smash-and-grab from some Arasaka associates on their way back home after the main roadways would’ve been blocked due to construction. It seemed so simple at first glance, but they’d unfortunately gotten in way overhead when he learned that the thing they were grabbing was the schematics for a cutting-edge military-grade cybernetic on behalf of Militech. Marcus and his team hardly had even made it halfway back to their main den when the hammer came down and security was over all of them. Several of his chooms had died and their boss ended up getting injured due to an added security measure on the schematics container. Carlos was asleep in his room when he heard the door slam open and his dad and uncle screaming for help. When his mom saw how badly the chief of the Valentinos was injured, she shoved the other two men out of the room and called Carlos down into the basement to help. It was the first time she’d needed him in a while for a procedure, and unlike when he was younger, she actually needed a nurse rather than just an assistant. He had to help fish shrapnel from a man’s body, monitor blood pressure, and even perform CPR. It was honestly the most gruesome experience that Carlos ever experienced, especially when they ran out of anesthetics and he had to practically strap the chief down and hold him still while his mother cleared the debris out of his wounds. The entire process took the better part of three hours but eventually he was stable, and his life was no longer in danger.

A few weeks later Marcus had been arrested for the crime of organizing the whole theft, apparently having struck a deal with Arasaka in place of the chief to take responsibility for the situation so that no more of his associates had to die. He also did it to ensure that Arasaka had as little reason to target his family as possible, especially when he assured them that nobody but him even knew the exact contents of what they were stealing in the first place. The chief of the Valentinos would neither forget the sacrifice of Marcus nor the involvement of Carlos in saving his life, and so when Carlos expressed a desire to join the Valentinos to get back at Arasaka for taking his father away, the chief rejected Carlos. For the sake of his mother and to honor Marcus, the chief couldn’t allow Carlos to become a part of this life. He instructed the younger members to not allow Carlos to join their set under any circumstances, and that Marcus’s family was under his direct protection. Many of the upstarts were quite fine with this arrangement, as they were pleased to know that Carlos wouldn’t be getting any special treatment just because he was a legacy and wouldn’t have to pay his dues like they did.

Other gang members took some joy in kicking down Carlos’s desires to be a Valentino, often openly poking fun at him whenever he would dress in their colors or try to follow them around, asking if he could practice shooting with them when they would shoot at glass bottles. No matter how hard he tried, nothing he did seemed to ever impress them, and Belicia was more than grateful. She insisted that Carlos has a special gift and that he should do something constructive with his hands, and noticing how much he liked cars, she got him some digital books about automotive engineering. By the time he was sixteen, he had a steady stream of light income from fixing people’s cars. As he wasn't technically running with them but still a known quantity, the gang often utilized him as a means to help install illegal modifications on their rides, giving him a small fee for a job well done. With each job, he would put much his money aside, saving up in hopes of get out of Vista Del Ray one of these days and going somewhere he’d be more than just a glorified grease monkey. Even with his father gone, he would still regularly hear his name spoken in conversations on the streets. It was surreal how someone could be so present even after they were physically gone, and it gave a minor glimpse into what it was like to really be a legend. If the chief wasn’t going to let him become one of the saints immortalized in art on the walls of the neighborhood, then he was going to find his own way to become a name nobody would ever be able to forget.

He continued ferreting away money and honing his skills, going out on drives with Miguel as his uncle decided to enlighten him a bit more on what being a legend really entailed. He told him stories about the greats, of people who filled graveyards with corpses like Adam Smasher or revolutionized technology like Rache Bartmoss. Every legend that Night City’s seen had a special gift which set them apart from the rest, and most of them had to climb a mountain of obstacles and die before they were recognized for their feats. Miguel insisted that the dream was too big for a little man like him, but Carlos knew that he was something special. He may not look like what Miguel thought a legend should, or the chief, but their opinions didn’t matter. He was going to do something nobody had ever done before and make a seat for himself at the table, but first he was going to have to take off the training wheels and leave home. Well, that and he was definitely going to need some chrome.

By 20, he had settled into an apartment out in Santo Domingo and had made contact with the local fixer. Getting connected with and visiting a ripperdoc that wasn’t his mom was mildly uncomfortable at first, but after the first cyberoptic surgery the others grew easier. Since he was fairly green and new to the game, he was usually given the jobs none of El Capitan’s other operators would take, though that did have the benefit of allowing him to meet more people. Most of the money he earned on jobs went straight into his workshop if it wasn’t going down his stomach, his own personal space that he’d carved out of a condemned factory. He’d graduated from tinkering with cars to modifying weapons, and the arms business was rather profitable as long as he kept it low key enough to avoid landing on 6th Street's radar. He’d also started getting into reading Bartmoss’s Brainware Blowout and Guide to the Net so that he could understand how to protect his equipment against hacking better. A personal project of his was a car that he was trying to build from the ground up. He wanted it to be something beyond the standard and capable of deploying its own weapon system like an urban war machine. Only problem was that it was hard to find a chassis or computer system capable of operating it.

It took a few jobs to show El Capitan that Carlos was more than just all talk before he started giving him higher paying work, but bigger pay meant that he was going to need some extra hands to deal with the added danger and risk. He was assigned to work alongside an older man named Tex to help provide support for a small caravan robbery that would be involving several small teams out in the badlands. The first time he met the older man, the pair of them had a brief disagreement about who would be driving since Carlos had his own doubts about trusting some stranger behind the wheel for a job this important. Tex was having absolutely none of it and Carlos had to adjust real quick or otherwise, he’d end up walking. To his surprise, the older man had some serious skill behind the wheel, as he handled the car with more finesse and grace than any street racer he’d seen and that was without having a vehicle link like him. The ride was so smooth that Carlos didn’t have too much trouble aiming and firing his weapon from the sunroof, and even when the caravan’s security started to counterattack Tex remained completely cool while other nearby cars were riddled with bullets and began to blow up. It would leave him with some tinnitus for a couple of days, but it was a profitable job for the both of them, and Carlos knew that he wanted to learn more from this guy.

Carlos would never claim that he begged, only insisted with persistence that the two of them should team up and work with one another more often. He tried to offer to fix up and maintain Tex's car, but the latter already could take care of it himself. Still, Carlos found his in when it came to the two of them needing to break into a safe and Tex was moments away from shooting it before Carlos stepped in and short circuited the lock. Working together wouldn’t only be good for Carlos, but would open up many more possible doors for Tex since Carlos had certain skills and knowledge that he didn’t. At first, Carlos would claim that they were in it for the money, but after going on two years he’s willing to admit that nowadays he’s more invested in the friendship than just what Tex could give him. Not only was Tex one of the only older men to take any serious role in guidance within his life aside from his uncle, but he really changed the perspective he had about Nomads. There’s still so much about Tex's life that remains an enigma to Carlos, but when he told him that he used to be a Nomad, it was hard to figure that the group of savages and kidnappers roaming the badlands that he grew up hearing stories could produce a guy like Tex.

## Personality

Carlos sees himself as arguably one of the smartest people that he knows, and he's not entirely wrong; his technical and medical expertise vastly exceeds the capability of anyone that he knew in his old neighborhood. Carlos has good habits of methodical study and research, which was imbued in him by his mother. This has left him with a high level of confidence in his own abilities and the desire to push the limits of what he can do in order to truly test what he is capable of. For years, he was a big fish in a small pond, confined to a corner of Heywood, so it is no surprise that he often approaches situations believing that he’s the smartest person in the room.

An extrovert that has learned the value of conversation and comedy, Carlos has a quick-talking charm that he’s refined with politeness and a mild formality, something which typically helps to ingratiate him with Corpo contacts. He prefers to keep his clients happy and smiling, as that makes it much easier to ask for favours. He values the connections that he makes with people and always seeks to get as much as he can out of the relationships he creates, both making it worth their while, and fully intending to enjoy the benefits of their company. While this doesn't lead him to instantly take advantage of them, Carlos certainly keeps certain unique privileges and skills people have in mind within his inner circle of friends.

Carlos believes the world is an unfair place, and the best way to navigate it is to show it can’t take anything from him. He also believes that people’s perspective of who he is matters a whole lot more than the truth, which is why he tends to put more time and care into his appearance and image than a lot from Vista Del Rey or Rancho Coronado would.

Carlos' methods cause him to almost regularly show off or try to handle tasks in a flashy and memorable manner, even when there was an easier option available. He currently believes that the story holds just as much importance as the end result, because a job well done could be easily forgotten, but a job famously done will always be talked about.

Usually, his solutions often come from approaching a problem backwards, analyzing the intended result and working his way from there. Carlos relies on his ingenuity to keep him from becoming predictable - something he considers to be the greatest weakness of any solo. Carlos is also acutely aware of his limitations and tries to surround himself with people that can cover them, which is one of the reasons he prefers working with others rather than going it alone.

Honesty, loyalty, and open communication are important to Carlos. Finding trustworthy people to surround yourself with is not easy, which is why when he finds somebody that he can trust he will do everything he can in order to keep them close. Night City is the world he’s immersed himself in, and it's full of people that would be willing to stab him in the back if it meant they came out a little bit richer on the other side. Because of this, he’s developed a healthy bit of suspicion towards most people. From Carlos' point of view, he’d rather be prepared for the knife to come, and be proven wrong, than get caught by surprise. Even if it means potentially causing an argument, he would rather communicate his feelings and opinions than let someone assume his desires and act against his best interest.

Despite his willingness to cheat, steal, and kill, Carlos has a sense of honor in the things he does and feels that he should always strive to never do any more damage or harm than is absolutely necessary. He’ll claim to others that it’s out of a sense of efficiency rather than morals, but he still ocassionally hears his mom’s voice in his mind when he’s at a crossroads of making a bad decision before he chooses what to do.