@flyingassassin: What if they are more like a Guild, like freemasons? Each member the crime lord of his own little fiefdom… a legend like Reaper could easily get into the inner circle and still be for hire
All sorts of things are possible! Although I’d put a guild setup on the less likely side. Unlike organized crime rings, a terrorist organization is founded around the idea of a Cause. Even though individual cells can be extremely dispersed and limited in communication, the organization’s leadership needs to be very unified to keep everything on track, or they’ll quickly lose any ability to accomplish their aims.
But I think you’re right that being a mercenary and having a seat at that table aren’t mutually exclusive. Not everybody in the organization has to be a True Believer. And it’s pretty common for a large, well-funded one–ISIS, Al Qaeda, the PLO and Sean Finn back in the day–to employ some mercenaries.
A mercenary is just a military contractor, and they work in the patterns of any contractor. You can have them working full-time for you, on retainer so you can call on them whenever suitable, or you can hire per job/project. You can hire them to fight in the field for you, or to train your people, or to advise on strategy and tactics. The thing about mercenaries is that, like Gabriel, the majority of them are fully trained and experienced military veterans. Often they have a background in elite forces: Green Berets, SEALS, SAS, Spetznaz, etc. So for a paramilitary operation or a group that expects to cross the paths of official military and law enforcement, there’s a lot of advantage to having some of these folks training up your militias or offering planning advice.
And like any other contractor, a mercenary’s reliability while on contract can vary widely. Ask any freelance worker and they can tell you that being a cheater is very unprofitable, even when you don’t stand a chance of being thrown off a building for failure. So many mercenaries are honorable in the sense that you can count on them to do their best by their current employer. It’s how any contractor builds a portfolio of repeat customers.
So Reaper could be a full-time military contractor with Talon, easily. It could even secure him a seat at that table if they’re smart enough to want experienced military input at that level of strategizing (and Doomfist definitely has enough sense for that). Another possibility is that he could be lying, and pretending to be a mercenary because he doesn’t want to tip his hand about being a full-fledged member.
I think the bottom line for now is that we don’t know what he’s up to or how exactly he’s there, but we can probably trust that he’s got ambitions higher than just doing what Talon says in return for money. You don’t turn traitor on the organization you spent 20-30 years of your life building just because you want a bigger paycheck. Reaper’s process may be calculating, but his motives are deeply passionate. Whether he’s pursuing them as a mercenary, or as a terrorist leader, or by posing as a terrorist leader in preparation for some kind of doublecross or whatever, that remains true.
I think the most interesting question right now is how Reaper earned Doomfist’s trust as far as he has it. If we question Reaper’s loyalty and motives, then how must Doomfist feel about it?
Akande has to have thought of all this and more.
I think he must know a lot about Reaper–enough that he at least believes he understands Reaper’s motives and likely moves very well. If I were him, I probably would constantly be questioning and testing Reaper’s loyalty because of his background. He was an enemy at one time, after all, and if he turned traitor once, then what might induce him to do it again? But Doomfist definitely does trust Reaper to some degree or he wouldn’t have someone that powerful and experienced standing next to him with loaded guns.
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2h2uuDs