[open and closed prompts]

[end_recording]

WHO: Jonathan Sims, Ojiro Sniper, Soldier: 76, Roxas, anyone else
WHERE: safehouse, fighting rings
WHEN: various late November/December
WHAT: OPEN prompt for Jonathan
NOTES OR WARNINGS: violence, some mild horror imagery with eyes and worms

((Contact praecipitanter if you are interested in a starter!))

Comments

[deicider]

Ojiro clocks the reaction out of the corner of their eye, and keeps their examination of it brief. Putting it on would be a little too rude, so they'll have to take Jack at his word for what it does. "Good branding," they comment as they set it down. It can't have much other use, in a hand-to-hand fight. "Was this standard gear for soldiers in your world?" It wouldn't surprise them, flashy as the visor was.

[personalwar]

Branding? That hadn't been Jack's intention, but if the visor gives his in-the-ring presence some more gravitas, he isn't going to argue with it. He isn't looking to get too much attention; just enough to get people curious about jumping into the ring with him so that he can rake in some more credits.

Given how unhelpful Gabriel's been with just about everything, he's got to get his hands on extra funds somehow.

"No," he says, shaking his hand as he reaches down to grab for the visor. "It's experimental tech, only a few were made. But it's come in handy a few times. Not so much here, but back home."

[deicider]

With nothing to fidget with, Sniper gets up, giving Jack some space while they walk the room. "You must have been in a unique position. What is it you were doing, back home?"

[personalwar]

There's a pause, and Jack crosses his arms, one hand still gripping onto his visor where it settles against his side. He's got no reason to answer all of Ojiro's questions, and they've been asking a lot already.

He narrows his eyes at them. "What's with the interrogation?"

It might be nothing more than simple curiosity; it usually is when it comes to the Displaced, or the refugees. But he's still allowed to question it.

[deicider]

Sniper swings around in their pacing to come back to Jack. Eyebrow quirked and a keen, amused light in their eyes. "What's with the defensiveness? I really don't get the rest of you; you all act like your life before this was some kind of government secret." A private joke, since Sniper's life was a government secret. They walk closer, within arm's length, not put off at all by Jack's defensive body language. "It's common sense to know the background of people you work with, especially with all the risky stuff we do. For all I know you're a crap shot without that visor."

"And anyway, haven't you ever stopped to think about we all have in common? Why us, rather than someone else? It seems like more than a coincidence that so many of us are competent and experienced."

[personalwar]

Parts of Jack's life had also been a government secret, at least for a time. Certain details of SEP still remain locked down, unknown to the public, but it had eventually come out that certain members of the original Overwatch strike team had been the result of a government program. He doesn't give a response to that comment other than a vaguely amused grunt, though.

"I can tell you I'm a good shot even without it. But sometimes when you're working on your own, it's better to have a trick up your sleeve." He shrugs, not convinced that he needs to explain more about his situation than that.

He's more interested in what Ojiro has to say about why they'd been the ones to end up here. It's a conversation he'd had with Daisy over the network not that long ago. "I have, yeah. I was somewhere else before this, a planet called El Nysa. It was the same thing, where people had been brought there from all kinds of different worlds. And like here, it was people with experience, or at least the imperative to be helpful."

It's why he'd always thought there was more to the Natha's claims.

[deicider]

"Right. They saved you from a 'storm'." Sniper still couldn't wrap their head around a storm that was a serial planet-killer. "What sort of things did the people who saved you want you to help with?"

[personalwar]

Right, Jack had already mentioned some of this to Ojiro. That had been back when he'd first arrived here, fresh off the boat so to speak, and so a lot of it is a blur.

"Usually they wanted help with whatever was going on down on the planet, whether it was investigating something, searching for parts, or training up for a potential threat."

Jack shrugs. He'd been there for two years, so it's not something that's simple to boil down into a few sentences.

[deicider]

"And so? How do you think it is they got so many useful people?" Sniper's genuinely curious. Their own theory is vague from lack of data, but very much a product of their own world, where influential personalities were the greatest resource.

[personalwar]

"In that case of the Natha..."

It's something that Jack's put some thought to before, though he hasn't had to consider it in detail for a few months now. He sighs and crosses his arms.

"If our worlds really were destroyed, or at least on the brink of it, and they had the power to rescue some of us from that, then my guess is that they prioritized people they thought would be useful."

If he thinks about it with a detachment from any personal feelings about it, Jack can admit that it had been the practical, strategic choice.

[deicider]

"But how did they know?" Sniper presses. "Were you a public figure? Was everyone? If we want to apply the same logic to why this god or whatever took us, how did it know we were 'useful', and what does it think we're useful for?"

[personalwar]

The question about whether or not he was a public figure gives Jack pause, but only for a moment. He does have an answer to this, and it has nothing to do with how well-known he may or may not have been, back home.

"It seemed like the Natha had some amount of telepathic ability." He still remembers the nametags they'd been given, back when they'd first landed on El Nysa. They'd been stapled to their shirts and couldn't be removed no matter what they did -- which was unfortunate, given that they put personal details about them on display.

"I'm guessing they had a way of getting insight into each of us, so that they could decide who to grab."

He's got a sour look on his face as he shrugs. He was never a fan of the Natha and he never will be.

[deicider]

Sniper, unerring ad their name, is hard to shake. They are interested in the details of selection, but they're interested in Jack, too. They're good at multitasking. "So Natha had every choice in the world and he chose Jack Miller. Why?"

[personalwar]

There's a moment of pause, not just at the forward question, but at the last name. Not the correct one, but the fake one he'd picked here as a means to protect himself. There is some comfort in knowing that he's at least got that to keep close to his chest.

"Guess because I'm a soldier," he says with a shrug, an attempt to be casual. "And if I've survived this long, it must mean I'm not half bad at it."