Jeanbean

*There was a lad in Glesga town, Ramensky was his name*
*Johnny didnae know it then but he was set for fame*

A haze of fog weed hung about the Elezen as he sat hunched over at his workshop corner. The tallest of the trio, he kept a space no larger than the others, so it was... cramped to say the least. The brim of his flatcap was tucked low, just above his eyes. Rhythmic puffs of smoke from the corner of his mouth followed each metallic tick as his tools clicked against the rotary. Pointed ears, sensitive to the slightest change in his machines, listened carefully as a steady hand worked to unscrew a plate. One day, one terrible day, he might reach an age where he could no longer do such intricate work, where his hands no longer obeyed his commands so zealously.  Old and gray. With only the memories to keep him satisfied.

Just beginning to creep into middle- age, the Elezen would have to face such a reality sooner than not, even if his race clung to their youth just a heartbeat longer. Nothing lasted forever, for better or worse. He'd become what he'd always riled against. The starry-eyed youth that was set out to become something of legend and infamy, someone to never grow old or settle for anything. To retire rich or die trying. Here he sat now, with the aches and pains of age, looking to live a life of quiet anonymity with whatever corner of the world he could have. Their shop was successful, but he would never live like a king.

Wasn't that the fate of everyone, though? Broken dreams often paved the roads set down by ambition. Regret shadowed him, to be sure, but in that he doubted he was alone. This city alone was full of people who'd lived like he had. Those who still did, even.

A silent snort, a puff of smoke. The difficulty with knowing your work well enough to do on autopilot was that it often left your mind time to wander. The small metallic clicks and mechanical ticks of the rotary often soothed him, but with a life filled with them, they could also take his mind anywhere it pleased. Sometimes to his benefit. Sometimes not.

*He did a wee bit job or two he blew them open wide*

Tick. Tick. Tick. Pointed ears pressed against cold steel,  listening carefully for the right click, the signal that the tumblers fell into place. Ilm by ilm, he turned the dial. A steady hand and a mental map were needed, as well as experience. You had to *feel* each lock, to get in tune with it. Each one was different, not just in code or combination, but in how it felt, and how it moved. He would never remember what lay inside the safe, nor how they'd gotten in or where it even was. Just the lock.

*But they caught him and they tried him*
*And they bunged him right inside*

The rasping metal click of shackles, the slam of prison doors, and the cold, grey silence of stone. Those were his next thoughts. Bitter on his tongue now, at the time he'd just been angry. Angry, and ambitious, and full of piss and vinegar. It made his screwdriver nearly slip and he let out an incomprehensible mutter. The follies of youth. What should have been a humbling experience, he'd instead taken as a challenge.

*Alley-ee alley-ay alley-oo alley-oh*
*Open up your prison gates and let Ramensky go*

Even a short stint in prison is one full of opportunity to learn. Put enough disgruntled unsavory types together, add in limitless amounts of freetime, you can't help but get a school for the criminally inclined. For a criminal to never have been imprisoned may be a boasting point, they often lose out more than not. Connections, skills, and plots formed in the underground almost all have their start in prisons. Maybe exile and corporal punishment had been the better option, barbaric as it might seem. At least it didn't leave those who'd been caught to stew on their thoughts for years.

*And when they let him out he said he'd try his best but then*
*He yielded tae temptation and they bunged him in again*

To think anyone would-- could-- actually reform in there was optimistic at best, and naive at worst. Some left with a new appreciation for freedom, others vowing against ever returning with venomous spite. Which had he left with? He couldn't even remember. But he remembered saying, he would never go back.

But he did.

Fourteen months and six jobs later. Everything had been small before then, simple. Locked doors in districts often overlooked by the law, storehouses, and padlocked stables. It escaped significant attention, but the rewards were often negligible. So much so, he was running up a debt, and running out of anyone who might loan him some gil just to survive. Marked as a criminal, honest work had been right out, so he'd been forced to return to his true passion. Despite the low pay, the string of success, and desperation for higher pay, made him careless. Like ravenous wolves eyeing the sheep just beyond the fence, he and his crew set about to make their fortune. Like any poor plan, it started in a tavern, chafing under their own situation. They could do it. They were confident, talented, in and out in less than an hour, and they'd have more than enough. The follies of youth. The farmer kept a closer eye than they could have known.

Within a week of the idea's conception, they'd been caught, tried, and imprisoned. But Jean hadn't been idle the past year. If he ever got caught... If he ever got caught... If he ever got caught. And now he was. The question was, *would* he actually go through with it?

Of course he would, if only just to prove he could. No thought given beyond success. Only that no lock could hold a talented Peterman.

*Now Johnny hit the headlines, entertained the boys below*
*When he climbed up tae the prison roof and gave a one-man show*

Ten months into his sentence, after fashioning crude tools and practicing on his cell's lock, he made his escape. Johnny Dumas was out of prison. But Johnny Dumas was far from being free. There were walls to scale, guards to evade, and dogs to outrun. Wiry and agile as he was, it hadn't been hard to climb his way up and out. The difficulty came when the alarm was raised, and everyone was put on high alert. The steep angles of the roof, no doubt from a mixture of Elezen architecture and to impede would be  escapees, did their best to impede him. Had it not been for the cover of night, he probably would have taken a crossbow bolt to his ribs long before. This was nothing like the silent, stealthy escape he'd imagined.

Another ambitious youth, another nail of guilt to be driven into this coffin he was making for himself, had managed to head him off at a turn. The steep slant of the roof and the massive drop off to their side meant anything beyond pathetic grabs were life threatening, let alone using a his weapon.  Him or me, Johnny would repeat to himself. Him or me, him or me. The inevitable happened, then, and they ended up tumbling over the side. What could have been a potentially lethal fall ended up instead only fracturing his arm, and breaking an ankle. The guard, however, lay motionless, having taken the brunt of the fall. Him or me. Him or me.

Johnny Dumas was free. But Johnny Dumas had also killed a man. None of this was what he'd planned for his escape. Limping along the nearby river, huddling in a hollow tree all night, and binding his wounds until he could get proper care, he'd left his would be captor for dead. If he hadn't been dead already.

Jean put the screwdriver down, and made a fist, flexing his arm. Phantom pains could still be felt if he tried hard enough, that numbing crack of lightning through his bone as it broke. He made his escape. But to what end? His whole life had been abandoned, just so he could prove a point. Family, friends; his brother still most likely in prison where he'd left him; his old crew, scattered or dead; his wife, long abandoned now. He couldn't even imagine the hell that they'd all been through since he'd left. Johnny Dumas may as well have been dead. Probably should have been, for all the good he'd done them.

But Jean de Monte was still very much alive. He signed again through a cloud of fog weed and hunched back over the gadget to fiddle with it once more.