Profile
Name: Jeremy
Class: Scout
Australium Content: Moderate
Mann & Machine - Scout
Backstory
Jeremy was an odd child, but perhaps that could be attributed to growing up without a father. A little too sharp-eyed on his mother's new boyfriends, a little too reluctant to cry, a little too unbruised for a boisterous youth of four and fourteen alike. He was, in a way, the family secret. Not in and of himself - no, the neighbors were quite aware of him, whether he was running screeching around the living room or stumbling through the door with an icepack on his jaw. But the way he healed was... off.
"Helpful," his mother had called it, when he'd first come home sporting a slice across his shin, the flesh already beginning to lattice over with pulsing new growth. "But upsetting." There'd been blood stains on his shoes, but the wound was clean as anything. "Try not to get hurt again, sweetheart. And don't show it to anyone. They won't like it."
Jeremy, not one to ignore his mother's word, had obeyed. There hadn't been any reason not to, really. Well - it would have been nice to boast of, he supposed. But the last time he'd showed off with a baseball, he'd been sent to the principal's office for breaking someone's nose, so perhaps it would be better to wait until he grew up.
Or, perhaps, to wait for when his Dad would come back. Because he was going to see his Dad again eventually, right?
Jeremy's first job was at a hot dog stand. But that was a kid's job, he reasoned, even as the years rolled over and the days ebbed long and short and long again. He wasn't quite grown up yet. Not quite.
Jeremy's second job was with Mann Co. A real grown-up job. And so what if his Dad hadn't shown up? He was great. The greatest. Kind of a big deal. He was just fine, with his big paycheck and his big gun, and when - if - his Dad showed up, he'd be proud. Real proud.
Jeremy's third job was with Mann Co., too.
Dreams, he noted, tasted much more metallic than he'd hoped.
...I don't know why I wrote this dramatically. It was like 2 AM. Actually in hindsight most of my writing comes out past midnight. What's up with that
Notes
Scout Scout Scout. What do I say about Scout. It's not so much that Mann & Machine throws him off his axis as it just. Jars him, somewhat. Everything is the same, just recontextualised. That's part of his issue, I think. Because it's always been there and he just never got to see it. It's pretty obvious in canon that he does comprehend that the sort of backstory he's made up for himself isn't true, but he prefers to play along with the lie because it plays into his ego better. Mann and Machine seeks to break that down to a certain extent; not only does he have to deal with his own lies breaking, he has to work with everyone else's lies which he didn't even realise were in play - or perhaps realised, but never thought to examine closely.
That said, he's still very much regular old Scout. Egocentric and attention-hungry, fond of pretending he /is/ an ideal rather than letting on that he's chasing it. Strong family ties, but not necessarily ideal ones. Sort of annoying.
Agency issues! Scout is. Very much the archetypical delinquent. A lot of his personality is build around that sort of "manchild" idea and one of the ways this is expressed is through the way he pushes back against overt accepted formalities and ideals. He's so very self assured of his innate quality, too, and in Mann and Machine I think that comes around to bite him in the butt. Because in this annoying roundabout way, Spy being his father and literally made for his job - that puts its foot clean through the idea of agency, I think. People go to school and learn to get respectable jobs; Scout has problems reading and gets into fights and gets a job running and killing for a living. It's antithetical to every formal expectation he's used to and his heritage flips that on its head. Once again, it's not a full blown axial tilt, but rather a simple niggling doubt. That keeps showing up. Man, this blows.
Mechanical Description
Scout's bones produce a small amount of biosynthetic nanomachines, which then integrate themselves into his general body. When his body is damaged, from internal or external forces, these repair any damage sustained by re-arranging surviving cells and proteins back into their former structures. This occurs in a matrix formation, but in the early stages can look a lot the damaged areas are melting, as the integrated nanomachines move and disrupt the solid structure of the flesh.
Scout's body contains a moderate amount of Australium, primarily from the nanomachines, as well as from his respawn chip, which as with all mercs is embedded in the interventricular septum.