I came for me. And I am not nobody.

 "The world should have protected you, but you have been asked to protect it. What an honor. What an injustice. The problem with becoming the kind of hero you needed yourself is that it can’t change the fact that nobody came for you." 

Personality

Jay is outwardly a cheerful, bright, and charismatic individual. He gets along well with almost everybody he meets - and he meets a lot of people being on the road a lot. In a lot of ways, he acts as a mirror - he tends to change like a chameleon depending on who he is. At his core, he is a loyal, tenacious, and stubborn mule of a man. He is fiercely protective of those he considers his and isn't afraid to get his hands dirty if it means safeguarding his people. He can be vicious and ruthless when it comes down to it, even though he will struggle with the morals and guilt later on. He's smart and quickly picks up concepts, which helps him as he hops from job to job across the continent. He will always return back to Gaila's side, though.

Brief History

Jay was very young when his parents adopted him - he had reportedly been abandoned and was alone. Assumed to be a human orphan, he grew up on a farm with his parents. He was a smart kid, quick to pick up skills, and eager to participate. He was friendly with most of the other kids, but mostly kept to himself. He was good friends with a younger child from a neighboring farm whom he often babysat. He grew to the age of fourteen in peace.

Then the weather started changing. Then the animals started getting sick. Then the crops started dying. All of a sudden, the safe and isolated fief where he had grown was experiencing a famine the likes of which had never been seen before. The isolation which protected them before became a death sentence as the Lord denied their need for assistance and refused to send any messages out for aid. The worry was that their isolated community, in which they took such pride, would become tainted by outsider influence.

It became a bloodbath. The lord and the nobles decreed that in order for the food to last through the next winter, they had to reduce the number of mouths to feed. The poorer folk - the farmers, the elderly, the poor and unimportant - it was decided that they would have to go. Including Jay's family. He only found this out when returning home from an attempt to forage to find soldiers interrogating his mother, his father already dead on the ground. His mother was telling them that it was only her and Jay's father in the house - no one else. Jay watched them kill her, citing her death being ordered by the Lord as a noble sacrifice. Realizing what this might mean, Jay left to run for his neighbors.

He was too late to save his neighbors, but he managed to get the soldier sent to their house before their seven-year-old child, Keven, was killed. He carried Keven through the woods to their hideout - a simple setup in a cave with a few games, blankets, and other similar items. He left Keven there and returned to both farms to loot them for supplies.

Jay then decided he had to know more about what was happened and tried to sneak into town, which was even more of a bloodbath than the more isolated farms. Someway or another, Jay ended up picking up a bunch of other kids like ducklings. The youngest was only two, and the eldest sixteen. By the time they all arrived back at the hideout, they were a total of 16 in number. They had no idea what to do, but they knew they wanted to survive.

The next four months were brutal. Jay and his gang became a scourge for the survivors as he and some of the older kids ventured out to steal food. They killed people - guards - and did their damnest to live despite all of the voices condemning them as evil for even trying. Jay was told by a dying guard that every mouth of food he stole condemned another to death, and it was a terrible thing for Jay to value his life above the lives of others.

They lost two. Their youngest was just too weak from lack of food, and when she got sick... it couldn't be helped. Ixia died, and none of them could stop it. The next to go was Zaffrine, caught by guards and killed - but not before she took at least one of them down with her. The group mourned their losses deeply. It started getting colder, and the group was afraid.

After those four months, it almost took them off guard when help actually arrived. Someone had managed to trek through the surrounding woods and mountains to reach their neighbors and cry for aid despite the Lord's best efforts to silence it.

The Lord's manor was burned, and him presumably along with it. Jay was spotted and captured, and eventually convinced of his rescuer's good intent enough that he collected the rest of the children. This is also when the group found out that they were being blamed for... a good amount of what had happened. Apparently, the remaining nobles assumed that their group was some suave and experienced bandit group, and placed all the blame for the lack of messages at their feet. They cried that the fearsome bandit group was responsible for the majority of the deaths, responsible for killing any messengers who dared try and seek help.

It was fortunate that no one seemed to connect the group of fourteen bedraggled, starving, weak children with the supposed fearsome bandits. 

To Jay's (and the rest of the group's) horror, they were all separated. Their saviors endeavored to find either relatives willing to take them in, or find placements for all of the orphaned and traumatized children - which necessitated splitting them up. Despite fighting against it like rabid animals, and injuring several people over the process who tried to separate the children by force, they were eventually forced to acquiesce. 

Jay has get to see any of the others again.

After some months, during which Jay turned 15-years-old, Jay was sent to his uncle's home - Uncle Wes - where he was expected to settle in with his aunt, uncle, and two younger cousins. He liked them - he did, enough to care about them and not want to saddle them with his myriad of issues. Unable to reconcile their care with his perception of being a burden, he ran away. He does still keep in contact with them, but he just could not stay when he felt his issues were bleeding over and effecting his remaining family.

Jay spent the next years travelling. He got better at interacting with people after his social skills atrophied during the famine, and quickly learned to mirror others. He picked up skills quickly, which usually let him get a job just about anywhere he ended up. He didn't tend to stay anywhere more than a few months before picking up and moving on.

(There is a part of him that is looking for his group, and part of him that never wants to see them again. There's part of him that is so afraid that if he sees them again, he will go right back to being that terrified fourteen-year-old trying his best to put on a brave face so the younger kids won't crumble. The fourteen-year-old that was too weak to even dig a grave for a two-year-old.)

Years passed, and Jay wandered into a town and met... Gaila. Gaila, who instantly took a shine to him, took him under her wing, and decided he would make a great lab assistant. Gaila, who saw how quickly he picked up on things and decided to sponsor him into the University because "It would be a waste, otherwise." Gaila, who was respectful of his boundaries but always pushing him to do better, be better.

So, he went to University. He threw himself into studies - and he'd always been a smart kid but now he had access to libraries of knowledge and teachers willing to foster his talents. He'd picked up mechanics from his Uncle Wes, and had improved his skills over the years, but he dove into it with reckless abandon.

His thesis project was J.U.S.T.E.S., a mechanical mountain lion, a Jointed Unit for Specific Threats and Emotional Support. His best friend, besides Gaila. JUSTES quickly became more than just an iron defender - she became family. She is the one who wakes him from nightmares, who reminds him to eat three times a day because he forgets otherwise, and who is a steady and soothing presence to ground him when he needs it. Truly, she lives up to the "Emotional Support" in her name.

Even with all of this, Jay still experiences wanderlust. He needs to travel - and maybe it's about trying to find people he doesn't know if he actually wants to find. Maybe it's a way to atone, to try and save others where he can to justify why he killed people, why he stole food out of the mouths of other starving folk. Maybe he just loves to learn and discover new things, to meet new people and learn about them. Any way you slice it, Jay still travels.

Just, now he always has somewhere to come back to. Now, he always has at least one companion who walks at his side.

It's a weird and crazy life, but it's his.