Nico Matias Vasquez Andino

Various diminutives. Each more ridiculous than the last.

Half-Blood

November 26, 1989

30

Rookie Tech

Male | he/him | Intrigued

Has a room above the bar, still sacks out at his brother's place more than he should.

Out of the cold case storage closet, into the active crime scene.

There's nothing particularly remarkable about Nico, features-wise. His hair is curly and generally a finger-combed mess. His facial hair is - Well, it's there. It's present. And that's all that can really be said about it either way. His fingers are long, his nose is sharp, and his clothing looks like it was chosen by someone else and he was instructed to wear it because it makes him look like someone with a job. Because it was.

5'9"

Deceptively muscular for a noodle.

Darío Yazbek Bernal

If asked why he got into this field, Nico would probably say that his sister watched an unhealthy amount of Forensic Files with him at a very young and impressionable age. And that the rest of it came from a good dose of inserting himself into his mother's personal space while she worked on court cases as a child. The genuine answer's probably somewhere in there, but the motivation is less motivation and more fascination. If there's one topic he's been fixated on, it's the peering very curiously and scientifically at the questionably legal. He likes untangling messy things until they're laid out in straight lines.

If pressed to think about this a bit more self-reflectively, he might say that it was something that he could tie himself to the people he cared about with. An area of genuine interest that genuinely interested people that mattered to him. And that now it's an area of interest that can be used to help people in a concrete and easily observable way. But that's not something quantifiable.

A lot of things about traditionally magical solutions are frustrating to him. He likes data. Facts. Physical evidence. He doesn't particularly like a lot of magical law and finds it deeply flawed. (Veritaserum is stupid. Truth is subjective depending on personal experience. How the question is asked and interpreted can lead to different results. You can't rely on this for witness testimony. Also, it's possibly ethically questionable. Prior Incantato is useless if the perpetrator stabbed someone in the face. Frustrating.) Which is not to imply that the no-maj legal system isn't deeply flawed. Just. That it isn't pertinent.

Nico has ... a lot of degrees, you guys. He's been to a lot of school. He was good at school. Well, not grammar school or even high school, exactly. Those weren't particularly riveting affairs. But once they let him specialize, he was very good at school. A regular fount of targeted information, Nico's easy to get information from without judgement. It's good that you asked. Because he knows this one. (And if he doesn't, he's absolutely going to find out.) And if he knows that you have information that he doesn't, he's unashamed to do the same.

Nico lives for the process. He likes analysis and assessment. It's better when you get a good result from it, sure. A lot of work with no net positive end result is frustrating and dissatisfying - but if someone's outsmarted him in a very impressive way, that's sort of interesting too. Lights up something fascinated at the back of his brain. He's going to find another angle to better academically destroy the whole thing from as soon as is humanly possible. But that doesn't make it any less interesting.

And, look, we'd all like to be good at people. But we're not. It takes him a long time to figure people out when it's outside of an applied setting. If you want him to analyze human behavior patterns? Sure, he's great. He knows all about behavior analysis. (He has a degree.) But that doesn't mean that it's a personal high point.

'Prominent Personaltiy Flaws' could be the title of Nico Andino's autobiography. He isn't great at interpersonal relationships right off the bat. He's gone to therapies for this. Quite extensively when he was younger. It takes him time to figure out people's facial expressions and tone of voice when applied in a social setting - but ask him to analyze it technically and he understands vocal inflection and body language like he's written a text book on it. (He'd prefer to do this in a social setting as well, but he's been reliably informed that it's uncomfortable for others.)

Stress is a weird area for Nico. Situations that are, for all intents and purposes, incredibly stressful for most people barely register as disruptive - but there are moments when someone chewing too loudly next to him during lunch will leave him twitchy and irritable. He'll break a bone and barely blink, but if someone he isn't comfortable with has gone and gotten into the middle of something he's working on it's annoyingly anxiety inducing. (Which, fine. Maybe not the best.) He's learned how to internalize this for the most part, how to compartmentalize unwarranted vexation - or at least how to recognize that it is unwarranted - but he's definitely better at dealing with technical problems than he is at dealing with interpersonal ones.

He's there for answers and results. And when he knows that he knows something, there is nothing - come hell or high water - that can get in the middle of whatever it takes for him to get his brain to spit the information back out again. He needs this here and he needs you there and you can't no, shh, don't say anything just yet he knows this. No really, don't move.

As someone who was raised well, the values that were instilled in him were good ones: be polite, be kind, take care of people, etc. So the intent is there, even if it isn't always the neatest effort when put into practice. Or if he still needs to glance around to make sure that he's doing the right thing in a socially correct fashion on occasion.

Nico respects authority enough to know that you sit and listen while someone in authority speaks, but not so much that you can't correct someone in authority when they're incorrect. How to do this appropriately is an act he's been field testing personally, but he doesn't mind when it happens to him. If you're right, you're right. If you're wrong, he gets to correct you. And if he's wrong, you get to correct him and he gets to be very interested in how you got this knowledge and what this knowledge is.

When it comes to the process, the argument of the old way or the new way is useless. You do things the right way. And the right way is the way that works. Deduction is well and fine, but it's only well and fine if you can prove it. Rules are fine too, just so long as they aren't getting in the way of progress purposefully. Nico won't actively go out of his way to break them, but that isn't to say that they don't need questioning on occasion. A lot of questioning. Do they really need that one?

For the most part, Nico doesn't mind working with others. Sure, they can talk too loud or get too close or touch too many things he's really prefer they didn't. But that's fine. That's people. He understands this. It's more that he's what some would call an acquired taste. He isn't particularly gentle about things. Linguistic subtlety and the concept of a soft touch aren't really his strong suit. He can be affectionate and open, doesn't mind the exchange of personal information, but definitely isn't the first person you'd send in to comfort a victim. Not because the empathy itself is lost on him, but because the execution isn't particularly stellar.

But this is what he likes. He knows a lot and he's more than happy to help if asked. He's a bit more of a homicide/violent crimes person than a theft person, sure, but a crime scene is a crime scene. And this is a really big theft. So it's fine. It's interesting. He's interested. Point him in the direction you want him. Or else he's definitely going to find one on his own.

East Harlem, New York City

Luciana Andino & Javier Vasquez | Parents | His mom is a forensic linguist. It's very cool. His dad is a pediatrician. It's less cool, but he knows a lot of weird medical facts.
Sperm Donor | Apparently a wizard. Apparently that was a thing.
Elena & Santiago Hernandez Andino | 40 | Half-Siblings | His mother's first marriage was short-lived, sure. But not entirely awful as far as results go. His sister is a forensic sketch artist and his brother is a plastic surgeon. One of these things is more interesting than the other.
Nazli Gürel Hernandez | 30 | Technically his sister-in-law. Nico refuses to call her his sister-in-law. Because she was his friend first. She's a potioneer who owns a line of wizarding cosmetics.

Viktor Izakov & Lorelai Talbot | Half-Siblings (by way of Sperm Donor) | 32 & 25 | Discovered a few years ago through familial DNA. Wizard-Dad hypothesis confirmed. (Thank you, science.)

Ong's Hat, Class of 2010

Two quick facts: Sperm donation is a quick and easy way to make some money. Wizards apparently aren't super into registering themselves on GED Match. (Neither is anyone else. Which is another problem entirely. This is how crimes get solved, people.) Largely irrelevant, as Nico doesn't so much care who his biological father is as he feels like that maybe should be a consideration on the intake form. Maybe just another section after Race/Ethnicity. Are you a wizard? Check yes or no.

Thing is, no one ever asked Nico if he particularly wanted to be magical. Just sort of showed up at the front door assuming that he'd be delighted by news that made him even more out of step with everyone he knew and proceeded from there. Which was fine, really. He has cousins. Magic wasn't new. Him having it was. His mother just rescheduled a few things and shipped him off to school in a different direction. He got over the shock of it relatively quickly, even if he didn't quite get over the inconvenience. (People really should ask. He knows that's considered polite.)

Maybe this would've been more of a problem if much of anything had changed. But his parents had already adjusted themselves around Nico's quirks and his siblings were old enough that jealousy or bitterness weren't really an issue. So, fine. Magic. And after the magic, things were pretty mundane. He opened his mouth at inopportune moments just as much at magic school as he had at any other school or therapy environment, but at magic school he had Naz. So it was a marked improvement. Until his brother went and married her. Which was impolite not due to any sort of romantic jealousy, but due to the fact that his brother really should've been able to find literally any other human being on the planet than Nico's best friend.

Nico's career history isn't exactly as long and storied as it could be, but that's largely because he spent a good deal of that 'career' time pursuing further (and further) education. While he was at Ong's Hat, he was also busy taking classes at getting his Bachelors of Science in Biochemistry so that they'd let him into an autopsy room. Then to John Jay for Masters Degrees in Forensic Science and Forensic Psychology. (He thought about a PhD, but ultimately decided that was something that could probably wait. And that he should probably get a job before his parents had an aneurysm.)

He absorbed information quickly and with enthusiasm - an easy choice for internship coordinators that needed someone to put in hyperfocused hours of work with little to no complaint, if not for fellow students to form "lasting social bonds" or whatever. This didn't bother him overly much, all things considered. He ready had friends and he was in it for the learning. Because science is important. Magic is well and good, but understanding is better. Because then it can be applied.

Which is pretty much what he ended up doing after that. Largely being farmed out to various overworked departments, excitedly babbling about advanced genetic testing and DNA analysis and left to wander stacks of old files and evidence to pick out the best of the dusty, cold cases to unbury from the back of their storage rooms. Which, again, didn't necessarily socialize him well with his immediate coworkers, but definitely endeared him to a great number of retired/long time aurors whose cold cases he dug out of the black hole of stasis. That is, until he was called in for this. Which was decidedly undusty. So that's new.

English, Spanish, & enough Turkish to not get laughed at.

sitting upside down on a couch and listening to stories about weird medical history, reading about eccentrics, detangling christmas lights, putting together unnecessarily complicated puzzles (whimsy pieces are a plus)

Blackthorn, onza fur, 12" (Probably. Good luck finding it.)

Bull Terrier

Jackie

yourbodyanditsbones @ gmail

(Other Contact)

EST