application for lastvoyages.
User Name/Nick: BatClaire.
User LJ: kingpsyborg.
AIM/IM: drfrankenclaire.
E-mail: visualcoma at gmail dot com.
Other Characters: N/A, new player.
Character Name: John Connor.
Series: Terminator (film timeline).
Age: 33.
From When?: Several weeks after evacuating the Skynet factory and undergoing a successful heart transplant at the end of Terminator Salvation.
Inmate/Warden:
Warden. John is a definitely one of 'the good guys'; his character falls neatly into the Messianic Archetype trope, albeit a much grittier and grimmer version than most. He is here to save the world, and he is very dedicated to his job. In contrast with his rough exterior, John is compassionate and deeply invested in preserving human life. He wants people to live, and he wants them to live well - by necessity, John believes in rehabilitating people from even the most extreme circumstances. Living in a world where humanity is on the brink of extinction, not even one single life can be written off, no matter what they've done or how much it might offend his personal morals. He doesn't immediately forgive and embrace people who've done awful things, but he is capable of taking a bitter pill for the greater good. Once he settles in, he'll take getting people to the point of redemption very seriously.
John is calm, organized, determined, and very much used to people who are pissed off about their situations. He'll genuinely want to help people, and he'll be inclined to be sympathetic with the inmates, being predisposed to distrust of conspiracies and anything that even hints at wrongful imprisonment. His military lifestyle and history of living outside the realm of normal society gives him both the structured mentality to assist in rehabilitation and the ability to identify with a wide range of people. He also has unique experience (for his world) with non-humans, having accepted and been very fond of both the T-800 Terminator who served as his protector as a child, and the cyborg Marcus Wright. That experience gives John a more open mind concerning beings who aren't human; he has the capacity to see past the black and white lines of the war when necessary.
Item: An iPod.
Abilities/Powers:
John is human with no supernatural powers. He is trained within an inch of his life in self-defense, weapons usage, military tactics, hacking, and so on, and is considered a genius in the realm of technology manipulation. His skill at hacking, programming, mechanics, engineering, and etc is potentially unmatched in his home world. Being from a future that has been forced to adapt quickly to radical conditions, John has had access to a wide variety of unusual medical care, and as such has a high resistance to radiation poisoning. He is fluent in English and Spanish.
It may be worth noting that John is a living paradox - his father, born some years after John, traveled back in time to be with his mother, and there is no known origin or timeloop breaker for that event. Beings sensitive to time phenomenon are free to find that weird.
Personality:
At first glance, John is just what he looks like: a hardened soldier, strong and silent and jaded. He's prepared his entire adolescent life for his destiny as the leader of the Resistance, and it shows. He lives and breathes the fight against the machines. John is well-spoken when he bothers to talk at length, but chances are he either keeps quiet or sticks to short and often profanity-laden remarks. He is smart and sharp, he knows the value of observation, and he's never seen unarmed. John has lived a life that would have broken most men - just half of what he's lived through has broken plenty - but his strength goes beyond stoic military airs.
John's current self was very much shaped by his upbringing. He was raised by his mother, Sarah Connor, who pushed him into extreme military training at a very young age. He never went to school, he never played with other children, and he never had any close emotional ties except for his mother. John loved her fiercely, and he understood with a clarity that was wise beyond his years that everything she did was for a purpose, and without malice. Despite that, he still came away with the scars of her treatment; though she loved him desperately, Sarah was unstable, and because John was always the closest person to her, he bore the brunt of that instability. She exposed him to violent acts and violent people, criminals - all the fringe extremists she could find. She never hid anything from him, and in doing so, John was keenly aware of her decisions in all fields, from observing the crimes she committed to the knowledge that she often used sex as manipulation to get them where they needed to be. He had the future drilled into his head at every turn: the world would end, John would lead humanity, John was a savior, John was a great military leader. John would someday meet his own father, half his age, and send him back in time to be with his mother. Though those scars would someday become the armor John used to survive, it left him out of step with everyone else. He was jaded about odd things no child should be jaded by, and he had all the baggage and the ego of a war hero without having experienced a war. (Yet.)
Even though life was hard as hell, young John never seemed to get run down by it. He got through the rough road of his childhood, foster care, even being hunted by Terminators with grace and (admittedly sarcastic and profanity-laden) humor, never once finding himself shell shocked or traumatized. He did, however, have moments of emotional hang-up - despite it all, John was deeply compassionate. At ten years old, he risked his life to break into a psychiatric facility to save his mother, and cried silently when she screamed at him for endangering himself instead of being happy to see him; he became attached to an emotionless machine because it was the first thing in his entire life that had listened to him without judgment, and was distraught at the loss of the Terminator. Contrary to his isolated upbringing and being so out of synch with his peers the world over, John loves people. He is, at the heart of himself, a caring, social-minded man, who wants to be around other people and have connections with them. In the volumes of recordings that Sarah left for her son, she called his compassion his greatest strength - and it's true.
John's experiences being homeless at age thirteen after the death of his mother gave him a very particular outlook on life. He didn't spurn help and reintegration into society because he wanted to be alone, but because he was afraid and guilty. He'd been confident and cavalier and even egotistical about his role as humanity's savior - from something unspeakably horrific. He had a grand destiny, but fulfilling it meant that a nuclear holocaust had to happen first. John did not fear Judgment Day for what it meant for him - he was trained and prepared and doubting himself meant doubting his mother's abilities to have kicked his ass into gear, and he'd never doubt Sarah - but instead for what it meant for everyone else. His own personal safety became immaterial in the face of setting a vital example; every step John took was to help the rest of humanity, and he never hesitated, even when it put him in the enemy's direct line of fire. His selflessness, even more than his seemingly prophetic foreknowledge of Skynet's tactics, was what made him into a figurehead of the Resistance in the war against the machines. His mother and every protector sent from the future had drilled into his head the importance of him staying safe and hidden away from danger, being too important to ever put himself at risk, but John defied it all. He knew that humanity deserved better - and he knew that people, beautiful, passionate, crazy, damaged, brilliant people, would see him and know that they could get up and fight, even if it was just with their bare hands. John made the decision to stay on the front lines, shoulder to shoulder every step of the way, and he has no intention of changing his mind.
Fourteen years into the war, and John has truly come into his own. Everything that he trained for has come to pass, and now that humanity is neck-deep in the horrific post-apocalyptic world, John makes sense in the context of his own life. The somewhat depressing nature of that fact is something that weighs on John, and he never lets himself forget that his hard life before the war was a privilege - no one else got to prepare. He is stable and calm and capable because he was given a post-traumatic mindset before he had anything to be post of. That's not to say the war hasn't impacted him - because it has, and deeply. The horror of it has beaten his once-snappy attitude into relative silence, though it still lurks there beneath the surface. His wife once called it “the bad boy act”, and though John has long since grown out of smirking out sarcastic insults with every breath, echoes of it creep through in the way he teases a friend, mocks an enemy, or whenever he does something dangerously impressive (like clothesline a Terminator by baiting it with an 80s glam metal 8track). John may come off as cold, and it's difficult for people who don't know him to tell when he's joking - but it's nothing that his peers find abraisive. Simply put, everyone in the post-Judgment Day world is a jerk to some degree, angry and traumatized and hurt, and John's default stoicism is in fact pretty normal - even rather nice - in context of his own current society. In line with that, the brittle attitudes of other people don't bother John; sometimes they don't even register.
Though John is largely composed, he is not unflappable, and remains (of course) completely human. John is extremely stubborn, and he can be rudely dismissive of people he decides aren't intelligent or otherwise not worth his time - he felt no remorse for his insubordination, and carried out those incidents with zero shame. Though he had grounding experiences with the T-800 Terminator “Uncle Bob” and Marcus, his foreknowledge of his own potential death at the hands of a T-850 that preyed off of his emotions has caused him to skew towards being suspicious and hostile to unknown entities moreso than he was as a young man, determined not to let that end be his true fate. He doesn't trust easily, and speaks little of his private life. His emotional touchstone is his wife, Kate. Their relationship is part what John considers destiny, and part passionate loyalty and love. John watched her transformation from a civilian veterinarian to a military warrior in the course of days, and he'll always be a little in awe of her. She's the only person who's seen John at his worst, and they've been at each others sides since Judgment Day.
He has a temper, and though it's difficult to rouse, it's explosive and fearsome when he gets going. John has few genuine triggers for his anger, but selfishly endangering human lives or attempting to harm his family are the big ones. He is very committed to his family - the devotion John showed to his mother absolutely has carried over to being incredibly protective and loyal concerning his wife and his (teenage!) father. John often finds himself conflicted; he loves Kate for her strength and brilliance, but still ends up anxious at the idea of her being in the field. He often ends up proverbially biting his tongue when she needs to do something dangerous, though now that she's pregnant, he doesn't always stay quiet about it. It's similar with Kyle, who is a young and talented fighter. John wants to protect him, but at the same time, he knows that Kyle needs to become a Resistance officer and be the man his mother will someday (in the past) fall in love with. Worry over his loved ones often causes John to make rash decisions and be notably more prone to anger than is otherwise normal for him.
As as Resistance officer, John has always been considered charismatic - the steady way he conducts himself, coupled with his unshakable determination, draws survivors wanting to fight the machines to him like magnets. He is confident, and the way he carries himself reflects that. His reputation makes him a little bit of a post-apocalyptic rock star; everyone knows his name, everyone pays attention to him, and he has the fierce loyalty of not only his direct subordinates, but Resistance members everywhere who believe he can effectively predict the future. One of his lieutenants, Blair, once said that if anyone has a problem with the machines, Connor's the man to see about it. John has made being human synonymous with opposing the machines, and his determination to reach out to anyone and everyone in need, even when it puts himself at risk, endears him to soldiers and civilians the world over. It helps that, due to his veritable military genius and uncanny instincts, all of John's advice and plans tend to be golden. Everyone but John, it seems, gets afraid - but John will never stop fighting, and John will always come for those in peril from Skynet. It's with that mentality that he goes on to lead the Resistance with - in his eyes, the whole war effort is worthless unless it's fought with heart.
On the barge, John will endeavor to make the most of his time and resources there. It'll be a lot for him to get used to - showers with water pressure and food that isn't processed nutrient sludge or the rare desert animal are only two small items on the enormous list of things that simply no longer exist on his Earth. The shock of it, and being distinctly out of practice communicating with anyone who doesn't understand the war, will keep him necessarily standoffish and short with people for a while. He'll be intrigued by the concept of other worlds and dimensions - in the weeks leading up to meeting Marcus, he was beginning to contemplate the true nature of time, and the potential effects of time traveling, wondering what was out there and what was really going on with the fabric of time. He'll be curious about the nature of the barge and concerned about the selection process, being inclined to sympathize with people being held anywhere against their will. The desire to understand and help, just as much as deals being made, will keep him there. Eventually, he'll want to know if Guns N' Roses ever released another album on some any other Earth's timeline.
History:
John was born in 1985 to single mother, Sarah Connor. His father, Kyle Reese, had been killed shortly after Sarah conceived John. Kyle was a time traveler; he had been sent from the future by an adult version of John himself to protect Sarah from an assassin, also sent back in time. The assassin was a Terminator - a cybernetic life form, a nearly unstoppable machine made to look like a human being, produced by a massive artificial intelligence entity in the future. Kyle revealed to Sarah the fate of the world: in 1997, a technology company called Cyberdyne would launch an AI defense system called Skynet. Skynet would become self-aware, determine humanity to be too dangerous to be allowed to live, and trigger a massive nuclear war that would obliterate most of the planet. Survivors would call it Judgment Day. John Connor, he said, Sarah's future son, was destined to be humanity's last great hope, the leader of the Resistance, the only human effort against the machines.
It was this foreknowledge coupled with the trauma of her experiences fighting the Terminator that led Sarah to raise John in an extreme fashion. Living “off the grid” - apart from normal society - John was brought up in a nomadic lifestyle throughout the southwestern United States, Mexico, and Central America. As soon as he was old enough to play with colored blocks, he was determined to also be old enough to play with gun magazines, and so from the earliest possible age, John was trained and groomed into being a soldier. His mother drilled the reality of the future into his head; he would be a great military leader, he would lead all of humanity. He needed to learn and most importantly, he needed to survive. John was kept isolated - the more people he interacted with, the more people that could get close and pose a threat, and so Sarah kept him close at all times. The bulk of his socialization came from the people that Sarah associated with in her effort to prepare John for the future - all adults, all whom John was expected to interact with as an equal. Gun runners, arms dealers, domestic terrorists, conspiracy theorists, paranoid ex-military professionals living in the middle of nowhere - the whole nine yards and more.
Despite the harsh circumstances, John thrived. He excelled at the militaristic lifestyle, and displayed a boundless natural aptitude for the things he was being taught. He was smart, he was adaptable, he held his own with adults - he even managed to be the grounding touchstone for his mother, who was often erratic and unstable due to her trauma. John was shaping up to be just what Kyle foretold - but the road was not without bumps. Large ones. Like Sarah being shot and arrested during an attempt to blow up a computer manufacturing factory in California, and John being taken into the state's custody as a result. Which is exactly what happened - and while John was lucky enough to be swept into a foster home and out of group care with relative speed, he was still left completely alone in a world he had no experience with nor connection to. With Sarah locked away in a psychiatric facility, John was told by police and doctors and social workers galore that she was mentally ill, that there was no such thing as Terminators or time travel, there was no impending doomsday, and that his entire upbringing was abusive. John did what any kid who felt abandoned and betrayed would do - he got angry, and he acted out. He largely ignored his foster parents, choosing instead to engage in sophisticated delinquency (most kids shoplifted, John expertly hacked and ripped off ATMs) and associating with older, similarly alternatively minded kids. The day before he was reunited with his mother, ten-year-old John was getting truly stellar mileage out of his future military leader maturity by hanging out in a local basement, making out with teenage girls.
John was given radical and very abrupt proof that his mother was not delusional, however, and utterly out of the blue, he was attacked in a mall - by a Terminator. He was saved by yet another Terminator: a T-800 - the same model that had hunted Sarah and Kyle - had come from the future, reprogrammed by John's future self. The T-800 (that's Arnold) was by Skynet standards an outdated model, potentially outmatched by the T-1000 (the liquidy one dressed like a cop) sent to assassinate John. After discovering that the T-1000 has murdered his foster parents, the T-800 attempted to flee with John to keep him safe, but the young boy had other ideas. He ordered the Terminator to help him spring his mother out of the mental facility she was being held at, desperate to be reunited with her now that the future - the real future - was pressing down on him. Though they had an altercation with the T-1000 in the process, they got Sarah out, and began to run.
On the way to Mexico, John discovered that the T-800's learning chip had been inhibited by Skynet, and never turned on by the Resistance members of the future. Though Sarah attempted to destroy the Terminator's CPU during the process, John argued and won, and the learning chip was activated, allowing the T-800 - nicknamed “Uncle Bob” by John - to evolve and adapt. This gave the Terminator something resembling a personality, and John began to feel attached to it. That attachment, visible to Sarah, spurred her into suddenly leaving them shortly before arriving at the border. Though she left instructions for John and the Terminator to remain where they were, John deduced that she'd gone to assassinate key Skynet developer, Miles Dyson. Angered at the idea of his mother becoming a murderer even to try and stop Judgment Day, John set out after her, and developed a less homicidal plan along the way: if he could prove to Dyson that the apocalyptic future was real by showing him Uncle Bob in all his cybernetic glory, they could surely convince him to abort his project, stopping Skynet from forming without anyone needing to die.
John's plan worked. The four of them - John, Sarah, the T-800 and now Dyson - set off to the laboratory at Cyberdyne HQ, intent on destroying all of his research and, to Sarah's horror, the remains of the Terminator she and Kyle had destroyed ten years prior, which Cyberdyne had been using as a model for their designs, propelling them towards Judgment Day faster than originally intended. A massive police force and the T-1000 assassin crashed the operation, and while they managed to complete their mission and destroy all the research, Dyson was killed. The T-1000 chased them to a steel mill, where they managed to defeat it. John made it out relatively unscathed, Sarah was injured, but the T-800 was severely damaged. Knowing that all their efforts would go to waste if any future technology was left behind, the T-800 instructed Sarah to lower him into the molten steel as well, so that its parts could not be scavenged. Though John was deeply upset by the loss, such logic could not be argued, and the T-800 was also destroyed.
Cyberdyne was in ruins, and the Skynet project was stopped in its tracks. Judgment Day couldn't happen - John was free from the looming future of doomsday, and humanity would not be destroyed. He was not free, however, from his mother's felony warrants (those don't expire!), so he and Sarah fled to Mexico. Soon after, Sarah was diagnosed with leukemia, and given six months to live. Against all odds, she fought the disease for over three years, surviving until after Judgment Day was supposed to have happened in 1997. Though John wanted to believe everything was over and to embrace his mother's legacy of peace, he was too paranoid and conditioned in his lifestyle, and in his heart, he didn't really believe it was over. The day that Sarah died, John fled once more, becoming a solitary drifter and remaining off the grid. This kept on for almost seven years, during which John slipped into a depressed state, triggered by his lack of direction and inability to integrate into society, and exacerbated by his paranoia and intermittent drug use.
In 2004, John's paranoia was proven to be anything but baseless. Having injured himself riding a motorcycle, John broke into an animal hospital for medical supplies, and was subsequently apprehended by the on-call vet, a woman named Kate Brewster. Kate turned out to have known him while he was briefly in school - at least, she knew him while he was in a basement while theoretically attending school; they had made out once, in 1995, the day before John first met the T-800 Terminator. Her past affections were of no help in the present, however, as she locked him in a dog kennel for robbing the animal hospital. Before Kate could call the police, she was attacked - by a Terminator. In the nick of time, both Kate and John were saved by yet another Terminator, one that was visually familiar to John: a T-850, a slightly upgraded model Terminator than the one he'd known as a child. The T-850 (Arnold again) had been sent to the past to protect John from the T-X Terminator (the sexy lady one in red leather) sent by Skynet. Because John had been living off the grid, Skynet could find no record of his location, and so they sent the T-X to assassinate his future lieutenants, which included Kate. She was in fact destined to be his second in command - and also his wife.
The T-850 explained that Judgment Day had not been prevented, merely delayed - that it was an inevitable event. Due to Cyberdyne's collapse, the United States Air Force had appropriated the Skynet project, and was now under the direction of General Robert Brewster - Kate's father. It also explained that in the future point it was from, John was already dead, assassinated by that self-same T-850, selected by Skynet for the mission due to John's emotional attachment to the T-800 model. When it was revealed that they only had hours left before Judgment Day would finally happen, John and Kate decided they had to try and stop it anyway. They arrived mere minutes too late, after Skynet had already become self-aware, and after the T-X had fatally shot General Brewster. With his dying breath, Brewster instructed John and his daughter to go to a hidden military base called Crystal Peak, leading them to believe that Skynet's core was there. They narrowly escaped the T-X and the corrupted T-850 and made it to Crystal Peak - only to be stopped by the T-X after all. They were then then saved by the recovered T-850, who managed to stop the T-X using his power cell, destroying them both in the process.
Inside Crystal Peak, John was dismayed to discover not a computer core, but a nuclear fallout shelter for government VIPs. Skynet, it turned out, no longer had nor needed a core, and was simply running as a massive, virus-like entity in too many computers on the planet to ever be merely taken offline. The Terminator was right: Judgment Day was inevitable. From inside the base, John and Kate listened over the radio as Skynet began launching missiles in the first wave of the nuclear holocaust. The only living person with intimate knowledge of what was happening and what was to come, John began to speak to survivors - military communication operators and private citizens alike - over the radio, guiding them in the beginning fight against the machines. It was with those broadcasts that his reputation - of being some kind of prophet - began. John knew things no one else did, and no matter how ludicrous those things sounded, he was always right.
From day one, John remained firmly on the front lines. Though he had the option to become a secret military asset, John rejected the idea of hiding away and dispensing his knowledge from a mountain top. He enlisted, same as anyone else. Through the years of nuclear fallout, of rescue missions, of infiltrations, of face-to-face combat with the machines, John was there, fighting tooth and nail for every life that he set his eyes on. From the ashes of the world's military and guerrilla forces rose the Resistance, and John was right there, becoming the perfect soldier he was raised to be. He was promoted quickly through the ranks, a clear asset in both sheer skill and for his knowledge of the events surrounding Judgment Day. In addition to his work as a Resistance officer, John also broadcast regular updates about the war via radio, keeping Resistance members and survivors in hiding alike informed and inspired. John eventually became the de facto commander of his base, overseeing front line infiltration and the Tech-Com unit (a group dedicated specifically to investigating, interpreting, and hacking Skynet-Terminator communications). Over the years of fighting, John and Kate became very close, and ultimately fell in love - they were married during the war, just as predicted. In 2017, Kate became pregnant with their first child.
By 2018, John had become embroiled in a conflict with Resistance command. Over time, the Resistance had become more strictly military versus a paramilitary-humanitarian force, and after fourteen years of war, command was starting to make more and more drastic calls, sacrificing soldiers and abandoning survivors in the name of conserving resources. John was vehemently opposed to such tactics, and he made his opinion known - vocally. He routinely engaged in acts of insubordination so that he could rescue and aid both fellow soldiers and civilians, and his actions put command in a frustration situation: John was too skilled and too influential to be stripped of his rank outright, but they couldn't let him carry on being insubordinate. Though John was enormously popular - downright messianic according to Resistance members worldwide - there were still many who believed him to be a 'false prophet', son of a mentally disturbed woman who hallucinated time travel, selling only deluded lies. Several Resistance command members shared in this view of John, and it made their point of contention even more strained. Ultimately, command sent other ranking officers and their units to John's base, forcing him to take a back seat and follow orders under close supervision.
On an attack mission at a Skynet base, John discovered - to his horror - a multitude of human prisoners, as well as Skynet's plans for Terminators made with living tissue, something that he hadn't believed would be possible for many years still. Skynet launched a counter-attack before the mission could be completed, killing the prisoners as well as Resistance fighters - including John's would-be superiors - leaving John the only survivor. During his evacuation, he demanded to be brought to command, where he reported his discovery. The command unit, specifically one General Ashdown, claimed that Skynet's progress was now officially irrelevant, as they had unearthed a miraculous jamming frequency that stalled the machines. They told John that they'd be using it to launch a massive attack on Skynet in four days, in response to a hit list intercepted from Skynet that listed all of command, John Connor, and an unknown civilian named Kyle Reese. John was troubled by this revelation, knowing that the machines had gotten Kyle's name via tampering with time travel. Though he returned to the base deeply troubled, he carried out tests of the jamming signal. It worked.
The next day, Tech-Com observed unusually high enemy movement in Los Angeles, so John dispatched two fighter pilots to check out the situation. A dogfight ensued as the pilots attempted to stop Skynet machines from abducting human prisoners, but were taken down. The only surviving pilot, Blair Williams, returned to the base with the only would-be prisoner to have escaped - a man named Marcus Wright. Marcus had somehow managed to trigger a magnetic land mine approaching the base, and was taken immediately to the infirmary - only to have Kate make a disturbing discovery: Marcus was a cyborg. John personally interrogated Marcus, though the cyborg desperately claimed to have no knowledge of what he was, or even Judgment Day at all, having woken up only days prior, finding himself fifteen years in the future and faced with a horrific reality. Marcus told John that Kyle was one of the humans taken prisoner by the machines, and John became conflicted; he could tell that Marcus truly believed all he was saying. The conflict was taken rather swiftly from his hands, however, as Blair took it upon herself to break Marcus out, believing in his humanity. Blair was injured and taken into custody as a traitor, and eventually John cornered Marcus as he attempted to flee. Marcus appealed to John's compassion, and the two men struck a deal: John would let Marcus go, and Marcus would send Kyle's coordinates to John once he'd reached Skynet's central base. In the morning, John released Blair from lockup, knowing that her judgment call had been one made in good faith.
Now knowing that Skynet was taking human prisoners to experiment on them, and that Kyle was among those being abducted for that very purpose, John went to command with a plea to hold off on the attack long enough for his unit to rescue and evacuate the prisoners. His request was denied, and John fought bitterly with General Ashdown, resulting in Ashdown ordering his immediate ejection from the Resistance. Immediately, John's subordinates declared their intent not to recognize the decision. In a final effort, John broadcast a message to the Resistance asking them to hold off on the attack and stand down until he personally gave them the order. He took off for Skynet Central himself - alone - to rendezvous with Marcus, who was sabotaged the base from the inside while John infiltrated and looked for Kyle. Though they were attacked by a newly minted T-800 (CGI Arnold), John got Kyle and his mute companion, a child named Star, out of the factory. John himself remained behind, deciding to use the T-800 power cells to blow up the entire base.
John managed to set up the power cells and rig them to a remote detonator, and was joined in his efforts by Marcus, who had fully rejected Skynet and the machine agenda. The two of them battled a T-800 Terminator, though the entire thing went to hell - Marcus was temporarily “offlined” in the fight, and John was stabbed through the heart when he attempted to revive him. Marcus awoke, destroyed the Terminator, and managed to get John out alive, where they were immediately collected by John's Resistance subordinates who'd come to evacuate the prisoners. Clinging to life, John was greeted by a host of new developments: his loyalists in the Resistance had indeed held off the attack, a move that had saved all of them, as the jamming frequency was revealed to have been a ruse by Skynet all along. The machines had been programmed to fake it, a move meant to draw in the Resistance in one final coup. The use of the jamming frequency allowed Skynet to assassinate the command unit, but nothing more. From the helicopter speedily evacuating him to a triage center, John detonated the power cells he'd rigged, completely obliterating the entire base and factory complex.
Though he'd survived the journey, John's prognosis was terminal. There was no way that he would be able to recover from the injuries he'd received, and he had hours to live. But his death was not to be - Marcus offered his own heart to save John, feeling that it was the way he could finally, truly be redeemed for the sins he'd committed before he'd been resurrected as a cyborg. The transplant was successful. In the wake of Marcus's sacrifice, John went on to fulfill his destiny. In his first radio broadcast as the leader of the Resistance, John firmly reminded humanity, “There is no fate but what we make.”
Sample Journal Entry:
Private | Text:
( begin imaginary lj-cut )
Initial assessment of the vessel, known only as “the Barge”, adheres roughly to the information given at time of agreement. Divide between individuals identified as “wardens” vs those identified as “inmates” is not immediately clear; holding cells and residential areas seem to be in the same areas, inmates are not generally restricted. Criteria for qualifying as either status is unknown.
Judging by the history presented in the public logs, population seems roughly in the 120-150 range. Identified individuals include a probable T-X unit and |
[ John stops typing, and for a long moment, stares unfocused at the keyboard of his laptop, some beat to shit Sony model salvaged years ago. ]
My mother.
[ He deletes the file. Closes his laptop. Picks up his communication device. ]
( end imaginary lj-cut )
Public | Audio:
Interesting décor ideas. Familiar, but no points for comfort. I'm guessing quarters aren't uniform.
[ His voice is nearly deadpan; there's a sardonic undercurrent, but it's far from hostile. ]
Is there standardized medical care on board?
[ A beat, nearly hesitation - ]
My name is John Connor.
Sample RP:
Rectangular, dimly lit, one true wall, a concave far side and ceiling, like a bulkhead - tech desk at the far end, gun rack in between that and the bed, shelving, the aluminum cabinet they called a dresser, the other desk, door. It was almost perfect; almost exactly like his quarters back at the base, barring the absence of most of the small personal affects and items relevant to his wife and her profession. If he limited his field of vision and stopped glancing at the second, inexplicable door now shoved up against the back of the room, he might even trick himself into thinking this wasn't really happening. But he can't, because the door is there - left open just a crack, so he can see a slim view of the anachronistic private bathroom inside.
It was fucking weird.
John Connor stood in the room that was his-but-not, fully aware of his surroundings, slowly going through each and every bit of equipment that lay on top of the worn military-issue blanket on his bed. The guns and ammo, incendiary devices, cold weapons - they were all familiar to him in theory, but as he'd been given them by a mysterious entity on high, it was just plain crazy not to check, re-check and re-check again. He'd been given the opportunity to pack, of course, but all John had brought with him onto the barge was a single duffel bag full of little more than a change of clothes and a medical kit that Kate had filled to bursting. Even though he'd been assured he could would back home with no time loss, he didn't necessarily trust that promise, and John would not tolerate removing resources from the Resistance if he didn't have to. That meant no guns, no supplies, not even a pocket knife. (He'd argued against the medkit - but what's a man supposed to do when he's being stared down by Major Katherine Brewster Connor, MD, six months pregnant and threatening his future in further parenthood for compliance? Shut the fuck up and take the medkit, that's what.)
He clicked the dot sight of the HK416 on and off, yanked on the light on the right rail. What was going to be out there? He wasn't afraid of hostile civilians, Terminators, even a Skynet trap - John had seen so much of all of it that the sight of the looming frame of a T-600 did little more than irritate him; danger was routine, and there was only so much epinephrine a body could produce before the rest of it gave up and let the damn thing even out. He fitted the magazine, set it aside in the 'checked' pile. This wasn't a battlefield. This was something else. This was different times, dimensions, and realities - or was it all one reality? Could reality be quantified like that? John had already begun to suspect that time was not linear, that somewhere out there, other Johns lived other lives, where Judgment Day happened in 1997 and the future foretold by Kyle to his mother was what they all experienced, again and again. If time was one long line, wouldn't their memories be altered to reflect every new step? Wouldn't John, if they'd ever really managed to stop Judgment Day, have vanished into nothingness?
The sound of the Mark 23 locking empty was a familiar dull ping. He reset it, loaded the magazine, chambered a round, pulled it out, loaded another .45, fit the magazine in again. John knew something was wrong with the timeline - maybe it was breaking down. There were things happening he couldn't quantify or explain, as if the cosmic stitches that held their whole world together were coming loose. Now there were enough holes in it to drag him through to some fucked up boat sailing through fucking space, calling on his - what? His good nature? He fit the handgun into his side holster. There had to be answers here, a lead, a hint, some inkling of goddamn inspiration. He couldn't just sit here and take time off to heal and shoot the shit. He wasn't a fucking therapist. Leaning over to sort line up boxes of ammo on the shelf to his left, John eyed the previously-non-existent bathroom door, hanging there like an alien trying to blend in with its absurdly mismatched surroundings. There was even a fucking toothbrush in there.
John's face twisted, his expression bitter. No, he wasn't a fucking therapist, but fuck therapy, anyway. The last time therapy did anyone any good was back before he had trouble telling if something smelled like blood or if it was still just him. He'd do this. For reconnaissance, for a deal, for some bullshit excuse for karma or dragging some sorry bastard out of the pit - whatever. There was opportunity in this, and even if the potential for trouble and emotional discord scratched at the back of his head in warning, it was too late. He'd caught a glimpse of it, and now he had to know.
Wardening. What the hell. Couldn't be worse than the fucking nuclear holocaust.
John shut the bathroom door, and went back to organizing his weapons.
Special Notes: The film timeline for the Terminator franchise is, in order: The Terminator (T1), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (T2), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (T3), and Terminator Salvation (T4). There are some hilarious continuity errors in T3 that are utterly disregarded in T4, mostly pertaining to John's age during T2. I have adhered to the version without the errors that is presented in T1, T2 and T4; that John was ten years old in T2, and thus thirty-three in T4.
If there are concerns about a new player apping into a pre-existing crew - I have been creepily stalking Last Voyages for a long time, eternally unsure who I could ever try to apply for, and I'm very interested in the premise and setting and excited to play around with it and interact with all the characters in the game. While I am of course glad I got enabled off of dear_mun to app this specific character, I am even more glad that I finally got a kick in the pants to app at this specific game.