John Smith

John Smith is a character in Petty Squabble.

Equipment/Abilities
John is clever, resourceful, and observant. He's got lifetimes of experience with any number of technologies, and he can recognize the function and purpose of many devices at a glance and most others with a bit of examination. In fact, it's not just technology that he can figure out quickly- he excels at putting things together from clues others would normally overlook, leading him to conclusions that would normally leave others completely baffled. Once he explains it, it's all quite plain, but his tendency to spot and connect relevant details, plucking signal from noise, is what sets him apart.

Since escaping Escape (as detailed below), John has received a few items of note from his erstwhile employer (also detailed below). The most obvious of these is his change in attire- he still wears a rather sharp black suit, but his original one has been swapped out with one made up of woven metal, rather than string. The fine steel mesh is, in function, similar to a weak chainmail- it won't do much against a straight-on puncture, but its hard, smooth surface will do a much better job of deflecting things. It's generally more resistant to wear and tear than normal cloth as well, but ultimately, these uses and benefits are just secondary to its prime purpose. The suit is wired to serve as an integrated transceiver, originally intended to allow John to report back to his employer several dimensions over. A small headset wired into the collar allows him to send and receive vocal communications, and the underside of the jacket's left wrist has a small, flexible touchscreen integrated in it to allow for visual communications and systems control. There is no camera present.

His ex-employer also provided him with a small multitool, its design similar to classical Swiss army knives. It differs in the specifics (a few more knives than is typical, for example), but the largest change is the internal locator beacon.

This beacon, along with the suit's transceiver, are tied into the third gift provided by John's previous employer: the bone splinter embedded next to John's heart. The three items are inextricably linked together; if one of them is isolated by a distance of more than 50 meters or so, all three will detonate. The explosive power is that of a small grenade- not enough for serious damage to a structure or landscape, but quite sufficient to deprive John of his torso. As the distance between the bone splinter and either of the two other objects increases, it begins to generate an electrical charge, minor at first and building to the point where John might almost prefer it to detonate once it nears the 50-meter mark.

He's not really a fan of the third item.

Description
John looks like a normal, everyday human. He's just far enough from average to look normal- maybe half an inch shorter than most, maybe five pounds heavier. His face is unique enough to be recognizable but normal enough to just slide over in a crowd. His hair's a shortish brown with flecks of grey, of the sort of length that can be dealt with with a comb and (in extreme cases) some water, and his skin's a vaguely middle-of-the-road brownish-white that speaks to a thoroughly mixed heritage.

John is not the sort of person one would describe as "stable," mentally. At best, he can be said to not care about the lives of others, though it would probably be more accurate to say he rather enjoys interfering with and ending them.

He derives other entertainment from excitement, risk, and challenge. He purposely puts himself in dangerous situations, living and thriving on the thrill of escaping or coming out on top by the skin of his teeth. If he gets bored with something, he's been known to give an opponent an advantage just to liven things up.

Biogaphy
For centuries, John travelled through time, moving from one place and time to the next at will. Some places, he'd stay for just days; others, he'd stay for months or years. It depended solely on his whims- with the aid of his Temporal Energy Displacement Device, he could just punch in a few controls and end up on a whole other world in a whole other era. It was, for him, a paradise. It meant that he could see amazing new things, meet amazing new people. It meant that he could do a vast array of things, both with and to those amazing new people. It meant that if the authorities came too close to catching up to him, he could start anew somewhere else, free of any sort of criminal record.

Unfortunately for him (though not for a great many other people, truth be told), one set of authorities came rather closer than the rest- with the aid of EMP-based weaponry, they nearly captured him. He was forced into a jump with his TEDD damaged, and on arrival, he found himself stranded.

A random passerby informed him that he was in New York City. It was April 8th, 1920, John learned, and as he rifled through the man's possessions, taking for himself the man's assorted currency, he reflected on his situation. It wasn't a particularly dangerous place, it would seem- primitive, certainly, but that could be appealing. He'd once spent several weeks relaxing in a hut on an isolated hut in a planet's very early history, shooting down some of the first species capable of flight.

That, however, was a very different situation. Here, he quickly realized, he was stuck. With his TEDD broken, he was going to have to live a normal 1920's existence.

Two days after arrival, he was being dragged down to the police station for possession of alcohol, public drunkenness, and assaulting an officer. He didn't go quietly- he ranted the whole time about all the many wonders he'd seen over the years and how they had no right to take that, give it back, or he swore, he'd... do something. Yeah.

After another few weeks of drunken antics (which led him back to the station half a dozen times more), he eventually settled down a bit and started to apply himself to the problem. Yes, he was stuck on an archaic planet with a damaged time machine and no access to the tools used to build the device in the first place. Ultimately, though, tools could be built- any society that could develop a time machine had to start somewhere, and he figured that with his knowledge, he could go from industrial-era to decently-civilized in five or so years. With his goal in mind, he settled down, opened a small printing press maintenance shop to pay the bills, and started his work.

More than twenty years later, he was nearly done. He'd fixed all but one of the systems, and while it may have taken a bit longer than he'd planned, he was satisfied with the result.

Of course, that last system was rather important- the power supply. Normally, an artificially-stabilized micro-scale wormhole would generate the energy needed, but he couldn't jump-start one of those without a miles-wide particle accelerator, and his knowledge of this planet's history was sufficient enough to tell him that he wouldn't have access to one of those any time soon. It was September of 1943 when he finished the last of the other systems, and from then on, all of his spare time was dedicated to thinking of a solution.

By October, he'd got it, and he was on a boat within three days, bound for the Land of the Rising Sun. It didn't take him long to find an apartment that would suit his needs, and soon enough, he had signed a two-year contract for one in downtown Hiroshima.

When August of 1945 came around, he was ready- the walls of the apartment were lined with a sophisticated energy-collection grid, all tied directly into the TEDD. It wouldn't be enough to jump-start the wormhole, not by a long shot, but it would at least give him one jump. He'd set the coordinates for the closest thing he had to a home (a flashy space-going city that wouldn't exist for several hundred years), and he was ready.

At 8:15 AM on August 6th, the first atomic weapon wielded by man was dropped. Just less than a minute later, John's energy-collection grid harnessed the unleashed power of the atom and channelled it into the TEDD, sending it careening through time.

He didn't arrive aboard fabulous Las Orbitas, though- instead, he was in a small, electronics-lined room. A redirection chamber, he quickly realized, and the implications set him laughing. He'd made it more home than he could've ever gotten to on purpose- he was on the road again, flying by the seat of his pants and doing his best to survive.

Unfortunately, the competition he'd been stolen away to be entered into didn't hold his attention long, and he quickly tore apart some of the technology the competition's developer had left sitting around the maze John and his fellow competitors had been left in. The power core from a Camarian combat drone, when set to overload, provided enough power to jump-start the wormhole, and despite a last-minute scuffle and an unexpected tagalong (which he was soon rid of), he was free.

Actually, free might not be the best term. His next jump was redirected by a stray causal string (one of the things that would normally be diverted by the safety systems he hadn't bothered to repair just yet), and he ended up face-to-face with a rather annoyed interdimensional being. Rather than expressing his annoyance in a multitude of painful ways (a few of which he took the time to describe to John), he offered the time-traveller a deal- if John agreed to do a few jobs, then he'd repair John's TEDD and send him on his way. He'd even throw in a few treats- a suit wired as a communicator that could call across dimensions, a multi-tool specifically designed with John in mind, and something that was more of a treat for his employer than for John himself, the bone fragment in his chest. The being packed him up, started fiddling with the TEDD, and sent John on his way, and after a few moderately-entertaining tasks, he deemed John's work complete. With the flick of a switch, John was sent off on his way. The being, satisfied with the work, placed the repaired TEDD to one side and watched the time-traveller vanish without it.