Blizz

Young Justice

"Godddd... Shut uuuupppppp." Listening to everyone bitch and moan, much as Cora didn't like to think of it that way, without being able to properly voice how she felt was starting to get on her nerves. Her left leg has at least three different muscle spasms in it, her lungs felt like they were on fucking fire, and you make matters worse, she felt ice cold. Not just cold in the sense that she'd stayed outside during the winter for too long, but cold in the sense that someone had hogtied her and flung her into the ocean of the coast of a beach in fucking Alaska. And now Quiver was getting mad.

"If Deathstroke's so-" Cough "Bad, no wonder the League fucked up, okay? This isn't he- Just stop. Metamorph's not stupid, he can take careofhimself-" Cora lurched forward in her wheelchair and hacked up static. She was feeling slightly less shit after waking up and getting her surroundings figured out. But every single muscle in her body was running on fumes at the moment. If she didn't speak up now, she wasn't going to later. "Bad- Bad things happen. It's done. It's... You're not secretly a time traveler, are you, Will?" She asked. "Everyone got fooled. Even you. Fuckin' sucks, yeah but- Do better. Like Pei said..."

Though, there was something Cora didn't get.

"How... How'd he even get there?" Cora asked Batman specifically. "Long way from here to there. No one noticed, huh?" Either they had a spare jet, which Cora didn't think was the case, or he'd taken a zeta tube there, but how? "Not you? Black Canary? Did-" Cough "Nobody checked on him? At all? Just let him go? After last time?"

Avengers Academy: Junior Year 💥

---

Location: Hallways
Skills:

By the time Leah had noticed that Danni accidentally set another fucking fire, the room was already getting flooded. Honestly, that was infinitely better than arson. April damn near drowned them, soaking everyone to the bone and that was a lot better than Leah having to socialize. April was really damn cool when she did stuff like that.

"Holy shit, April. That was fast as fuck, good." She was saying that mostly because she knew April was likely about to explode into a ball of apologies for getting everyone wet... Which would probably have Sabine saying something about how it was the perfect excuse to start shedding some layers. April was getting good at using those powers of hers. And now-

Oh, Danni was running off.

"Danni?! Where are you going?! HEY!" THIS WAS YOUR FUCKING IDEA! DON'T LEAVE ME HERE YOU FUCKING TWINK!

Great. Now she had to talk to people without the yappy little redhead egging her on. "Ughhhhh, fuck. Good save, April. Shit, now I gotta go and- Wait. Hang on. Nobody move, I have an idea."

Leah reached into her pocket and pulled out a marker. She didn't want to fish in her pocket for the runes since her clothes were soaked and that would probably rip them. _{Maybe next time, Sabine.} She uncapped the marker and drew a straight line on the palm of her hand. She then drew a slash going upwards, starting from the bottom end of it. An inverted rune, which apparently meant the opposite of the normal rune.

"I was looking this stuff up over the break, you can do the opposite of a rune by just turning it upside down. This one means water, so..." Leah pressed her hand against the wall of the hallway, and felt something weird pulsing through her bones. She didn't feel that earlier, when Danni had watched her magically fertilize a sunflower. It was like someone had sat her skeleton next to an electric space heater and then shook it like a rattle. The wall was the first to be affected, and then the surroundings.

Everyone who had just been soaked by the sprinklers and April's powers started to steam, like a boiling pot of water, only the temperature didn't rise. All that water first evaporated, and then right as the hallway started to feel, humid, the water in the air just vanished. The entire hallway and the people in it were bone dry in seconds. Leah's hair and clothes felt lighter by the second, and whatever water damage to phones, earbuds or paper that had been caused suddenly wasn't a thing. It was almost like Leah had reversed time in a way, completely undoing the mess.

She was surprised to see that it worked at all.

"Fuck me... I couldn't do shit with these a week ago."

2100 ☢️ BADLAND REPUBLIC

”Ah, shit.”

Johnny blinked sand out of his eyes, kicked up as the Striders swerved off Highway Three and into the dunes on the horizon. There was a hill between here and there, it was about as far as the Striders would reasonably take him. He sure as shit wasn’t walking that far, so it was worth the cash. He checked his compass and took off.

Traveling through the desert on foot was a dangerous thing. Back in the old days, they had these things called “firefighters.” They ran into burning places and saved people, rarely ever dying because they were so good at it. Johnny walking through a desert on an area full of bandits and the occasional mutant-hating shithead was like one of those firefighters of days past. He liked danger. That shit didn’t scare him.

The sun beat down and cast wavy mirages across the houses. Sully’s Rest was a trading post, the sort of place people didn’t shoot up because then it would be on people like Johnny to clean up the culprits. The old man reached into his satchel and rearranged a few things. There was a badge he’d knicked off his latest target, a man who’d been a Republic guard but went off the deep end for reasons Johnny really didn’t give much of a shit about. They wanted the guy dead, not alive.

He made sure that was at the very bottom of his things.

And then the old mutant strolled through Sully’s Rest like he’d bought the place and named it Johnny’s Coffin. He’d been through here more times than he could count, and every time he walked in, there was always some punk who sneered at his green skin and the fact that he looked like he crawled out of the ground. The occasional techie stopping in to strike out for the ruined out east, a few Striders brave enough to be this close to civilization, maybe even that Pete kid would shoot him.

He got a few of those looks today, just like any other day.

”Ain’t got nothin’ for none’a you,” Johnny rasped at a shopkeeper who didn’t like him. ”Wheel that ass’a yours indoors, boy.”

He got a middle finger in return, and took a left for the Dine-Out, where the food was actually worth a damn. There really were a lot of people out this way today. The Highway must’ve been backed up, he figured.

The door swung open, and he reached for his chips. Lots of people didn’t like mutants, but money was still money, and he was a fair tipper when someone didn’t poison a plate of food. Good food was always something to take seriously out in these parts.

”Mornin’ sunshine,” he croaked, grabbing a seat up front. Johnny sat down a generous stack of Republic chips. ”Lemme have a sand worm stew, keep the change.”

✨ Under Black Stars ✨

Annika had many places in mind, so they went to all of them.

It was a full day, to be sure. They started in California, where they paid a visit to Annika's favorite library. Annika got herself some iced tea, and then they walked through a portal to France.

And then Romania.

Then Greece.

Japan.

China, Canada, they even stopped in Wakanda for a few hours.

All in the span of one day.

They made a point to swing by monuments, places of old history gone by. Annika loved that, it was something he'd used to help her first learn to read. Though, it wasn't terribly difficult given the fact that she was much older once. They'd circumnavigated the planet throughout the day, and it might've seemed hectic to anyone else's perspective, but Jack was an interdimensional traveler. He spent a lifetime doing this very thing, and he'd teach Annika his tricks in time. He used to make these kind of trips across entire universes, stepping between realities like each one was a step on a flight of stairs.

It was a good day overall, like the kind of day a more mundane family would spend in an amusement park where they take advantage of every minute.

Jack and Annika made their way to New York City, deciding to stop at a library and relax for the rest of the day. And then, they showed up.

A man who looked both older and younger than Jack at the same time. Brown skin, a short and pointed beard and uncannily yellow eyes. He was built like someone who was an Olympic sprinter a few years ago. He was walking down the sidewalk wearing some fancy ass orange cardigan that made him look like a rich kid. And there was a girl just a year old than Annika with him. His daughter.

The four of them crossed paths. Jack stopped walking, and he stopped walking.

"Jack." The man sneered at him.

"Who's this dad?" The girl asked.

Jack sighed. He really didn't need this shit today.

"Annika... This is Salem Hennigar. And... His daughter."

"This, Serena, is the man who once set our house on fire," Salem explained. The girl named Serena balked.

"Wait. You have a kid?!" She asked.

That was before he'd been sent backwards through time. That was before Annika had met him. Great, time shenanigans. This would have never happened otherwise. But... Fuck.

"Your father stole a priceless tome from the Second Eternity from me, before I could secure it," Jack explained to the girl. "So I made him regret that."

"Yeah... And now you've got a kid. That's strange. Who's the unlucky lady, Jack?" Salem asked.

"That is neither here nor there. We were just on our way to a library, get out of our way."

"I lost my favorite shoes in that fire, asshole. Dad, can we fight him?"

"I was wondering the same thing. I bet he's still got that magic coin we found in Berlin." Salem rolled up his sleeves, and his eyes started to glow.

"If you lay one finger on my daughter, I will disembowel you both," Jack warned, curling his hand into a fist. People were starting to pay attention to them. "Get. Out. Of. Our. Way."

"Nah. Get 'em, Serena."

Serena, who looked like she'd never eaten more than a slice of bread in her entire life, leaped at Jack. Her nails turned into claws and she shrieked like an animal.

Jack just sighed.

X-Men: GenetiX

Sure enough, there were plenty of guards down there. And a red beam of light was faster than someone's ability to raise a gun.

Storm's wind tunnel sent them flying without and issue, and the unarmed guards went splat against a wall in the elevator they were suspended in, leaving the X-Men to witness door after door in what looked to be a research level. It was pitch black, only illuminated by the Cyclops' beam and the occasional flashlight that Ryder telekinetically knicked off the guards. This floor had been evacuated, it was a mid-level kind of security environment where the most intensive research was the kind of reactions a mutant's immune system had to a certain drug or chemical compound. This was where they took the dangerous ones, the ones that could kill people. They were getting into the thick of things, now

They'd gone ahead. Whatever.

And then Xavier had to get involved right as she started walking forward. That was annoying.

I'll be whatever the fuck I want. Whenever I want to be it. Get out of the fucking way, you're distracting m-

A door slid open behind Ryder.

A guard stepped out and leveled a gun at her. She aimed her laser rifle at him. She missed, he didn't.

The bullet ripped clean through flesh and embedded itself into the wall, not reaching bone or an artery. It was shallow, and it didn't bleed much. Not a terrible wound, but a reminder she was still mortal. The guard fired another shot from his pistol, and then two more. The three bullets after the first stopped mid-air, and she burned a hole through his ribs with her gun. He didn't get up.

Ryder growled at the pain of having a chunk of her should split open. Her telekinetic powers forced the wound shut for a moment, and then her gun floated up to point at it. She mentally willed the rifle to lose most of its intensity, right before burning it shut.

They could've just bandaged it, but Ryder was being Ryder about this whole thing.

"The bottom floor is that way, there are other ways in and out that guards can't access." Routes on the top executives and Andrew Becker could access.

"Becker's probably in there." She kept walking.

---

It was unraveling.

The chamber was like a dream, right before someone woke up. Streaks of neon green that lit the room trembled and flickered, blurring between real and fake. He'd gotten so comfortable expressing his presence like this that Becker almost forgot just how fragile he really was. As if the galaxy outside Earth had been smeared.

"Stop."

It didn't make him stop. The only space in this room that wasn't trembling was the silhouette of a man standing in the middle. Just a vantablack absence where a person should have been. He was furious, and the fact that the vessel was this close by meant he could've taken her at any moment. He knew that much, but his brother wasn't so sure. Too much time had been invested for them to jump the gun now.

"If you want this, you'll have to listen to me," Andrew said. He could've been pulped at any second, his brother wasn't that weak. "We have her, even if she's injured, you can still make the transference. There's-"

There were twenty feet between Andrew Becker and the negative space he called family a moment ago. Now there were two.

"I'm trying. I'm trying to help you, you know that..." He was so tired of trying. Umbra was so tired of waiting, of course, but it wasn't the same. Andrew could have just shut the door and left him any time.

Why he didn't, he couldn't remember.

"I know what you're thinking, you know that? You... You won't slip me if you do what I think you're going to do. It won't work. You're just strong enough to take once, and then what?"

It was like screaming into a void.

"It might be years before you get your strength back, and by then? She'd likely be dead. Listen to me, Ja-"

An invisible force sent Andrew into a wall that was not there five minutes ago.

The room screamed, bent itself into words that mimicked the idea of human speech. Every pseudo molecule vibrated all at once.

I TOLD YOU. DO NOT CALL ME THAT.

Andrew's body felt like it was going to flash freeze, his thoughts made him feel sick. His limbs weren't real, but they were still stuck to him. He was a passenger in his own shell, a figment of the life his brother had to reckon with every day. The specter of nothingness was standing over him. It never moved through space, but it was simply there in whatever position it wanted to be. Andrew rolled over onto his side and stared up at where its eyes would have been.

"Fine. Listen to me, Umbra. Listen," Andrew pleaded.

NO.

"You... Won't. You won't be strong enough."

YOU WILL.

Andrew's blood ran cold, and he was already numb.

"Don't do it... You-"

The hazy realm around them cascaded to the ground, like stars falling from the heavens. Everything he'd constructed in here, every little figment that gave him the permissions necessary to even exist within this space as his brother did shattered.

And then, to Andrew Becker, there was nothing.

There was only nothing.

He stepped out, into the real world for the first time in years.

YOU ARE MINE. YOU WILL SEE.

Avengers Academy: Junior Year 💥

Leah, CoC

---

---

Jotunn

---

---

Ability Scores

Melee 4	Agility 1	Resilience 3	Vigilance 1	Ego 1	Logic 0

Defense Scores

Melee 14	Agility 11	Resilience 13	Vigilance 11	Ego 11	Logic 10

Damage

Melee d6 x 4 + 4	Agility d6 x 2 + 1	Ego d6 x 2 + 1	Logic d6 x 2 + 0

Extra Info

Rank 2	Health (30 x Resilience) 90	Focus (30 x Vigilence) 60	Karma 2	Damage Reduction 2

Biography

Full Name: Leah Rose Jordan
Pronouns: She/Her
Age: 16
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 198lbs
Gender: Female
Eye Color: Brown
Hair Color: Brown and slightly curly... And weirdly coarse.
Distinguishing Features: She has multiple scars in random places all over her arms, back and chest. Most of them are old.
Origin: Mutant
Team:
Base: Avengers Academy
Alignment: Chaotic good
Hobbies: Boxing, traveling and reading

History

There once was a kid named Mayra Pavon, daughter of an absolutely evil man. Imperator was a high-profile mercenary who worked for people he did not disclose to Mayra until she was around 10, and wanted to bring her under his wing. His reasons were varied, but one of them was to allegedly teach her to control her new abilities. Mayra wasn't given a choice, and so for the next two years, she was trained extensively in close-quarters combat by a man who could outthink her every move five minutes in advance. It was painful, being knocked on her ass every time she attempted to make a single swing on him, and it put a massive strain on her relationship with both Imperator and her mother, who believed she was simply away with her father on business trips. She never fully understood why things had to be this way, and she eventually rebelled against him in an act of rage.

One day when she was home, she confessed everything to her mother. Mayra told her everything, about her being a mutant, about the so-called training, even about Imperator's workshop. Unsurprisingly, she didn't believe most of that, but it didn't matter in the end, because Carlos Pavon came home just in time. When his wife questioned him, he didn't even react before he shot her. The whole house fell in on them. Imperator was a superhuman genius, but in his own hubris he failed to account for the possibility that Mayra's training had been more productive than he realized. There is nothing left of that house but a veritable mountain of stone and rubble.

She ran, and ran, and ran.

The rest is somewhat blurry in her mind, but she walked through the Arizona deserts for hours on her own, before eventually flying away on a rock when she came down from the emotional rollercoaster of watching her mother bleed out, and possibly burying her father alive. Mayra eventually found the Avenger's Academy, and used the opportunity to live a different life than what was destined for her. All she hopes now is that no one uncovers her history, or digs into legal records to see if her name is Leah or Mayra.

Personality

Leah has always been somewhat tough to read. She often prefers to just deal with problems the hard way and not make any attempt to convey how the feels. Letting people in or opening up is hard for Leah, because she feels weak and insecure when others have to go out of their way to tend to her. Leah regularly puts on a brave face and treats herself like she's invincible. Not out of arrogance, but out of a desire to be as little of a burden to those around her as possible, and because she has unresolved, bitter feelings towards his past that she doesn't want others to know about. None of that means she doesn't care about others, though. In fact, Leah can be viscerally protective of others who are in a position where they can't protect themselves. The victimized, the weak, and wounded are people she feels great sympathy for.

Beneath that stony exterior is a girl who feels conflicted towards herself. Deep down, Leah knows she can't deny where she came from, but refuses to acknowledge this and buries any trace of her home. Leah craves the act of living her own idea of being untouchable, she wants to be the strongest person in the world and build the highest walls because she's afraid of what could come back to haunt her. At the same time, Leah wants to be close to her friends, as much as possible, so she can be a part of their lives and be there for them when they may or may not need help. Even if she won't admit it to anyone, Leah is stuck between her insecurities and her own compassion for others. This can sometimes lead to self-destructive tendencies in which she exhausts herself to help people, but refuses to let them do anything in return.

Traits

• Abrasive: Leah rubs people the wrong way. She has trouble on Ego checks when persuading someone to help her, but an edge on Ego checks when trying to intimidate someone.
• Battle Ready: Leah is always mentally ready for battle, getting an extra 30 focus.
• Quick Learner: If Leah fails an action check, they gain an edge on the check if they try the same action gain on her next turn.

Tags

• Heroic
• Hounded
• Linguist: Spanish
• Obligation (School)
• Alien Heritage (Jotunheim)
• Supernatural
• Young

Powers

Basic Powers:

• Brawling: Leah is hard to hit.
  • Prerequisites: None
  • Duration: Permanent
  • Effect: Leah can use her Melee defense score against Agility attacks too.
• Mighty 1: Leah is superhumanly strong.
  • Prerequisites: None
  • Duration: Permanent
  • Effect: Leah is treated as one size bigger for lifting, carrying, and throwing things. She also adds +1 to her Melee damage multiplier, and she gains a +1 bonus to Melee checks other than attacks.
• Mighty 2: Leah could lift a bus.
  • Prerequisites: Mighty 1, Rank 2
  • Duration: Permanent
  • Effect: Leah is treated as two sizes bigger for lifting, carrying, and throwing things. She also adds +2 to her Melee damage multiplier, and she gains a +2 bonus to Melee checks other than attacks.
• Sturdy 1: Leah has protection from physical damage.
  • Prerequisites: None
  • Duration: Permanent
  • Effect: Leah's body is so sturdy that she has Health Damage Reduction 1.
• Sturdy 2: Leah has protection from physical damage.
  • Prerequisites: Sturdy 1, Rank 2
  • Duration: Permanent
  • Effect: Leah's body is so sturdy that she has Health Damage Reduction 2.

Super Strength:

• Clobber: Leah's pummels her foe with enough force to knock them flat.
  • Prerequisites: None
  • Action: Standard
  • Duration: Instant
  • Effect: Leah makes a close attack. If the attack is a success, the enemy takes regular damage. On a fantastic success, the enemy takes double damage and is knocked prone.
• Smash: SMASH!
  • Prerequisites: Clobber, Rank 2
  • Action: Standard
  • Duration: Instant
  • Cost: 5 or more focus
  • Effect: Leah makes a close attack with an edge. For this attack, add +1 to Leah's Melee damage bonus for every 2 points of focus she spends. On a success, an affect target takes that total damage. On a fantastic success, an affected target takes double that total damage and is stunned for one round.

Elemental Control (Earth):

• Special Effects triggered by a fantastic success -
  • Earth: Target moves at half speed for one round.

• Elemental Burst (Earth): Leah fires off a boulder.
  • Prerequisites: None
  • Action: Standard
  • Duration: Instant
  • Range: 10 Spaces
  • Effect: Leah makes a ranged attack against an enemy in line of sight. If the attack is a success, it inflicts regular damage. On a fantastic success, the enemy takes double damage instead and the elemental type's special effect.
• Elemental Barrier (Earth): Leah raises a wall of earth.
  • Prerequisites: Elemental Burst, Rank 2
  • Action: Standard
  • Duration: Concentration
  • Cost: 5
  • Effect: Leah forms a wall of earth within her line of sight and up to 10 spaces away per rank. This covers up to 2 spaces across (vertically/horizontally) per rank. Leah makes an Agility check and compares the results against the Agility defense of any target in the affected spaces. On a success, Leah chooses which side of the barrier the target winds up on. On a failure, the target chooses. On a Fantastic success, the target suffers the element's special effect too.
    Attacks against the barrier are against Leah's Ego defense. Any attacks against it that do 10 points of damage or less are instantly absorbed, and the barrier continues. If an attack does more than 10 points of damage, it destroys the barrier. Either way, the attack leaves those behind the barrier unharmed.
• Elemental Grab (Earth): Leah snares an enemy in earth.
  • Prerequisites: Elemental Burst, Rank 2
  • Action: Standard
  • Duration: Concentration
  • Range: Varies
  • Cost: 5
  • Effect: Leah makes an Ego attack against a target's Melee defense within 5 spaces times Leah's rank. If the attack is a success Leah grabs the target with Earth. On a fantastic success, the target is pinned and suffers the element's special effect. Breaking free requires a successful Melee check against target number 20.

The Symphony: Modern Magic

first

Avengers Academy: Junior Year 💥

---

Location: Hallways
Skills:

Leah went inside looking for Madalyne. What the fuck did Danni know, anyway? She wasn't small, she just had basic consideration for the shit other people were doing.

She was perfectly capable of talking to someone, she just didn't particularly want to, but this little fiery twink that never stopped yapping would yap more if she just gave him a flat "no." Leah didn't necessarily want to be on Danni's bad side but she felt like he was being a bit pushy in talking her into this. It was just magic, Leah didn't even care about magic! She didn't even need to know this stuff! It could wait, and honestly, Leah was fine with just not being helped at all. How hard could it be to figure it out herself?

Oh, shit, her hands were jittering. Leah stuffed them into her pockets to fish for her phone and started typing something up while she walked.

@The Girls

Dannis alive by the way. i wanna talk when this fuckup of a day is over. just us three. also where the fuck is madalyne.

She walked into the hallways and started looking. She fully expected Danni to shout down her throat the second he so much as got a vision of her like a ghost or vaguely recognized someone with red hair. Leah didn't really have words to explain this shitty feeling she got in her chest whenever she had to bother the people she didn't talk to on a regular basis. It was just weird. It made her voice stop working, it made her forget the words she wanted to use. It just... Ugh.

Eventually she found Madalyne, standing around by Danni and Dorian's dorm, with April there.

_"Uh... You. Witch demon person." Leah sounded dumb. "Remember when I bugged you about runes?" She held them up in her hand. "I figured stuff out about them. I brought a flower back to life. Danni's obsessed over it... What's everyone standing around like this for?"

2100 ☢️ BADLAND REPUBLIC

Johnny Corpse

Johnny Corpse

"Gettin' way too old for this shit, man."

---

___________________________________ P R O F I L E Age 73 Sex Male Height 5'7" Weight 168lbs Race Mutant Origin Bounty Hunter Transportation N/A Starting Location Sully’s Rest Color Code 00ff00 ___________________________________ I N V E N T O R Y - Compass - Hand radio - Small notebook full of radio tower frequencies - Map of Sevara - Satchel (Rations, knife, tent kit, and other small things) ____________________________________ E Q U I P M E N T -CG29: A single-action, magnetic rifle built to quietly accelerate a metal slug to absurd speed, strong enough to punch through two square inches of reinforced steel from 100 meters away. -Hazer-12: An old laser pistol that hasn't been in production for a few decades. It has adjustable settings, and can put out enough heat to slowly cook dead meat or enough to burn open a human's stomach. Johnny mostly keeps it for sentimental value. - Leather armor, fitted with plenty of pockets for ammo or rations, and designed for coverage from the sun. - Trusty knife. (If inapplicable leave blank or mark as NA.) ____________________________________ A T T R I B U T E S Points: 12 (These points are meant to be distributed among the six attributes below. This is to be removed from the CS after points have been distributed. Do not forget to show your work next to each ability regarding points added and subtracted by modifiers.) (Each category is capped at four points however can still be boosted by choice modifiers.) Strength: 1 Fitness: -1 [1 + Old Bones] Dexterity: 2 Perception: 3 Intellect: 1 Endurance: 8 [4 + Mutant Freak]

____________________________________________________________________________ APPEARANCE DESCRIPTION They call him Johnny Corpse for a reason. Johnny is a mutant, the sort that doesn't get many chances to blend in with the crowd. His skin is a pallid shade of green that makes him look perpetually infected with some sort of skin condition. Some shades of bloody red blend in around his joints, and if it was just that, nobody would clock him as a mutant. But if you look closely, you can see a very easily-spotted gouge in his left arm that he jammed bits of metal into a few decades ago, which might look like cybernetics to some people. Some punk took a glowing-hot piece of iron and swung it at him, trying to maim and kill Johnny, but it only pissed him off. At the ripe old age of 73, Johnny doesn't look as old as he really is, but he sure sounds like it. Anyone who hears him speak gets treated to the sound of sand in a blender. And then there's his face, with one glazed-over eye, an eyepatch and scars from shit someone might never believe. ____________________________________________________________________________ BACKSTORY It is well and truly a mystery as to where exactly the mutant known as Johnny Corpse came from. He’s nobody special in terms of his deeds out in the wasteland, barring the fact that he’s on record for bringing in over three hundred bounties, he didn’t carve out a place in the reaches past Sevara, and he damn sure didn’t come up from money like some people. Rather, Johnny Corpse first started making appearances fifty years ago when he, allegedly, was just a man of his 30s. Anyone who makes a point to track intelligent mutants and their actions could tell you that he always had a mind for making money and bringing a sense of frontier justice down on someone’s head. From Sully’s Rest to Ardhelm, Havenwood to the other end of Lake Tankar, the old mutant’s made his way up and down the sands more times than most can count. He’s packed bodies cold and warm and made a bloody killing chasing bounties that no sane individual cares for. Once, he tracked down a man who was more cybernetics than meat, and shot the man seventeen times in the skull before he finally died in an explosion of fire and blood, killing three “innocent” bystanders in the process, before he left Strider territory. Johnny has mostly kept his head down in most other areas. He’s lucky enough to have never been shot dead by the Northwood Blackwatch, and “settlers” that have come and gone never could kill him either, on the rare occasion they jumped him. Johnny’s life has mostly been one of hard living and shooting the socially acceptable targets, for the better part of five decades. Whenever he rolls through the more civilized areas, people usually know him ahead of time and can at least be assured he’s not there to shoot them, and his record as an effective bounty hunter is no doubt the only thing that allows him to walk into such places at all. Recently, Johnny paid off some Striders to let him hitch a ride to the outskirts of Sully’s Rest, where he spent the last two days taking it easy. ____________________________________________________________________________ PERSONALITY Johnny is the poster boy of jaded, disgruntled bastards who don't let the world tell them what to do. Everywhere he goes, people give him funny looks and keep the safety on their guns off. And his brusque, blunt attitude definitely doesn't help, but they usually let him go when they see the body he's packing. It's a tough world, one that'll chew you up and spit you right out if you don't bite back, and Johnny Corpse didn't earn his nickname by falling over without getting back up. More often than not, he gets himself out of sticky situations in civilized areas by telling someone to just fuck off and behave themselves, since he usually has a gun at the ready before they do. Still, Johnny isn't that hard to get along with, if you're not a bitch about it. Sit down, act your age and shoot the shoot about the weather or whatever's going on in Havenwood the last few weeks and he'll probably tolerate your presence for the day. Johnny's seen a lot of people come and go over the years, being one who isn't inclined to sit down and stay still, so his patience is usually a lot less than most. ____________________________________________________________________________ MOTIVATION AND OUTLOOK Money, life and freedom. The only things someone who lives life by the gun in their hand truly needs. ____________________________________________________________________________ MODIFIERS Mutant Freak - Johnny occasionally jokes that shooting him in the head with a shotgun at point blank range is only going to scratch the shotgun. +4 to Endurance. Old Bones - Johnny is older than a lot of people who travel on a regular basis, and he's starting to slow down. -2 to Fitness.

✨ Under Black Stars ✨

The Everdark had many dangers in it, arguably more dangers than wonders. It hardly surprised him that something scared his daughter.

So he did what any good father would have done, and consoled her. Listening to the explanation of her nightmare made him wonder why she had it. In one sense, it did make sense, she was not always a child that lived in the dark. Once, she was a woman who happened to have crossed paths with Jack when the Earth was endangered. But in another way, he didn't know who the old Annika was, at all.

They sat on the couch, the roof was illuminated by purple candlelight. He didn't know how much he should have told her, Jack didn't know much from that time. It had only been hours, and now she was only a kid who couldn't possibly have earned that kind of burden.

"Nightmares are said to be a window into that which has yet to happen, but might come to pass," He suggested, holding her close. Jack was speaking quietly, out of habit. "They tell us of the things we wish to avoid, and remind us of what has long passed. I do not know what you witnessed, or why, but it is a memory, child. It will pass, as many things do. Perhaps... Perhaps there was a deeper meaning to this dream, but for now, let us distract ourselves with something else."

Jack waved a hand out in front of himself and Annika, and the dark room spilled open into bright, sunny wilderness. Time was strange in their home, it was always day somewhere, and always night somewhere else. But there, past the edge of the portal he'd just snapped open, it was perfectly warm and bright. It was Earth, somewhere in North America, an open wilderness spreading out before it.

"I have often found that a walk through the world is the best cure for an uneasy mind." He stood, and reached out. A coat flew across the room and into his hand. "Go to your room and prepare for one of our usual trips, we'll head to any place in Earth-666 that you'd like, Annika. We haven't been there in some time, have we?"