[i]"Moving on is a simple thing, what it leaves behind is hard." -Dave Mustaine, Megadeth, A Tout le Monde. [/i] [b]Crash and Burn // Shi Canyon // 1800 Hours. [/b] [i]Silence. Finally, something that he could appreciate. John sat at his desk, a lit cigar in one hand and a cloud of smoke exhaling from between his hips. He was pleased with the day's work - Extryte sent him his retirement funding, he had his personal helicopter cleaned, and he just purchased a new shipment of Colombian cigars - but something was eating at him. JT grabbed the picture frame on his desk and smiled warmly at the image on it. It was him in his youth, sitting beside some of hi closest companions. It was times like this that made him happy, reflecting on the past. The silent office was interrupted when the wooden doors slid open, the noise and frantic chatter of the main bridge somewhat alarming the cowboy. In stepped a man, standing at around five foot ten and with a white lab coat on his body. He looked distressed, as one could tell by the look on his face. JT silently gestured to the chair across his desk and the brown-haired man rushed to sit. "Brown," JT stated with a worried tone. "Sir. I... Have some alarming news." The man replied back as he grabbed his data-pad from his jacket. He pulled up the device's recorded videos and showed it to JT. A black and white screen was shown, a depiction of the reactor core with a man standing in it. He wore the outfit of an Extryte soldier of JT's fleet, though the man had a duffel bag. "This was taken just five minutes ago," Brown said, JT's face forming a look of confusion. "He was carrying a sticky bomb." Just then, explosions erupted from only a few levels down. JT felt the shock and Holden reached for the pistol at his hip, although JT stood and drew his revolver before Brown could make any moves. He shot the man's gun out of instinct and pointed it to the doctor's head. "Holden, what did you do?" JT asked, emotionless and inquisitive all the same. "Doctor Hanser says hi. Now, goo to hell." That was all Holden said as he reached into his jacket, standing up and pulling out a bayonet. JT quickly shot Holden in the chest, a pang of guilt and regret filling his heart. The cowboy watched the doctor fall back into his chair and drop the knife, agony filling his lungs with each breath he took. With a scowl and a retrieval of the knife, JT walked out of his office and left the dying doctor to rest. The hangar was full of corpses. Soldiers fired at other soldiers, not knowing who to trust and who to fire at. JT noticed that the majority of the ones who were opening fire without mulling it over had bore no mask or helmet, so those were who he would fire at. He picked up an assault rifle from a fallen soldier and ran to his personal helicopter, firing at the occasional soldier to protect himself. The insides of the helicopter were full, but not with guns or armour. He had a black box, the outline of a brain and a power symbol engraved on it. The helicopter had a generator inside, so JT knew what the box was. "The human mainframe eh? Been a while, head," JT joked to himself. Despite his calm nature he knew the grim reality of what would happen. That box? Carried the brain he once had inside his completely robotic head and boney skull, utilizing its raw Atlas power as a way to control multiple frames via signals. He had to commend himself for it, though he couldn't spend too long wondering exactly how he got the science to work out, rather he spoke an evacuation order into the helicopter's wireless P.A system, and started flying. John looked out the window to his ship, before a blinding light of orange filled the sky and an eruption came from the blast zone. Treason and treachery was always aboard his ship, although he would never expect... That. Regardless, he was out a ship and all his savings, with the exception of a bail-out account he had. Even then, he doubted one thousand dollars and a plane trip to Fiji would get him very far. [/i] [b]Deja Vu // 0943 Hours // Dojoville[/b] [i]JT walked out of his clinic feeling... Strangely better, yet expectedly worse. He lost everything but the revolver on his hip, a pair of swords, his shotgun and a rifle, although that wouldn't be a bad thing. He also salvaged his strangely ornate knife, although that was a thing he'd never give up. The Marshal had went in and reversed the augmenting process, installing some organic limbs on his body and making a hollow shell - well, using one had had previously made - where he only had his arm augmentations and a couple of neural enhancements. He felt human, though he was poor - Deja Vu. JT put a "CLOSED" sign on his shop's front doors and walked the streets. Bitter sadness filled him, though he accepted his grim reality. ((Open.)) ((Felt like reworking JT, so I'll list his changes for you guys who're curious.))[/i] [spoiler]>Balanced loadout. >Slightly less rude/cocky. >Actually has to work for his stuff. >Less augs - Some remain. [/spoiler]