John abilities

John. It's my understanding that you're a… super soldier? A Dog of War?"

"No," John said. "Yes, about the Dog of War label, no, I'm strong but I'm not a super soldier, like they appear in movies. I've been told I'm… a stained glass mosaic of a soldier, each segment pulled from someone."

"A… Frankenstein?" Verona asked.

"I'd hope my brain wasn't labeled abnormal, but…" he shrugged, smiling. "Sure. Maybe there's some cherry picking going on there, with what pieces go into the mosaic, but…"

"Are you stuck on that bit of it because you don't like being called a super soldier, specifically?" Avery asked.

"I don't mind but… I don't want to mislead you or be called a liar," he said. "It's more accurate to say I'm many fragments adding up to a whole. If I'm good at what I do, it's because it's more or less all that I do."

"So when you can improvise bombs and think those three or four steps ahead," Lucy said, "it's because-"

"It's because that's the way I think, when I have a free moment to think. I'm this, twenty-four seven, seven days a week. I don't sleep, I don't ever fully relax. If I do find distraction, it's only a small share of me that's distracted. The rest is ready."

"Are you entirely made up of Canadian soldiers?"

"No. Canadian, American, ANA, armed citizens, others."

*

"What's your day to day like? What do you do?"

"I walk around at an hour before people are really awake. I clean and sharpen my weapons. I watch some TV. I read and play video games."

"Feels like you're just whiling away the time," Lucy said.

"Waiting, watching. I don't get bored in the same way you do. There's a stasis in it. A… lack of anxiety. I expect to live a long, long time, so there's no feeling that I'm wasting my time."

*

"How?" Verona asked. "What can you do, exactly? You come back when you're killed?"

"More like I don't die in the first place. I can always keep fighting until I'm badly wounded enough that nobody would believe I could keep fighting. If I get obliterated, you wait a couple days, I'll show up again. I get stronger with every life I take. It clarifies me. I and the other ones like me began with no names, no real faces. Just… uniforms. Piecemeal, like each part of the outfit was taken from one body. After one very bloody, prolonged fight, I and two of my squadmates took on handles. Then names. Then specializations. Skillsets."

*

“Someone like me, I can collect grenades. I won't magically always have one, but if I wanted to set out to get a gun or a grenade, I'd know just the direction to walk. The easiest path to take to find or acquire one, whether it's on a corpse or in a hiding place.”

*

Verona jumped in, "If you did want it… how would you do it? Kill the Carmine Beast."

"Explosives? A big gun?" John asked. "She's too… important. The forces of this world wouldn't want to let you, and if you did manage it, I feel like it might hurt."

"Hurt how?" Avery asked.

"Like killing Yalda, except… not as obvious. I could be wrong. But this death feels bitter in the way hers did. I don't know what it would look like, but I feel like that would be something that would demand an answer or put something on the shoulders of the killer or killers. You could look for that."

*

He pulled off the simple necklace that the dog tags and the singular ring hung off of. He removed three tags, each of them partially melted, gouged, or otherwise scarred, well past the point that the labels could be read. "For you."

"What do they do?"

"They're connected to me. Throw one down, stride forward into conflict without looking back… I'll be right behind you."

"Like…"

"No more than five steps behind, armed. I'll give it back to you after, or give you another one, provided you aren't being frivolous in calling me there."

- Lost for Words 1.4

_________

Text: John Stiles

Dog of War / Dog Tag

Capabilities

– Strong

– War Sense?

– Can't die or be easily bound while the war that created him continues

– Doesn't sleep, doesn't relax. Vigilant & tactical thinking constantly

– Can appear quickly if summoned

Notes

* Mosaic personality, made up of many soldiers

- 2.1 Interview Notes