john's life before the time agency was, for lack of a better term, a shit show. and in order to fully understand john, you have to understand where he came from. his planet did not have so much a technical name... but it's residents referred to it as the asylum. it had a nasty history. prisons were becoming over populated, on every planet. full of dangerous beings, who could never be let out into the public, for fear of carnage. so what do they do? why, of course their leaders would band together, and agree to mass transportation. or more accurately, deportation. there was a planet out there. small, too small for much use... but uninhabitable. dump your problems there, away from civilization, and with no way back home. install guards, keep an eye out... but ultimately, leave them to their own devices. let them eat each other, if they wish. as long as it's not upstanding members of the community, who cares?
a few decades down the line, however, and the planet too was considered full. the program was discontinued, but no return ships ever came. in fact, civilization largely forgot about them. in the absence of civilization, chaos reigned. although a society was built amongst the inmates, prisons turned into territories, into homes... corruption ran heavy, especially in the inner cities. one hundred years down the line, and instead of politicians, you had gang warfare. half of the residents were on something. prisoners had children, had grandchildren, and they too grew up in this madness.
but despite the chaos, it was still safer in the cities. outside, in the barren desert... well, it was tough out there. those who delved past city limits, did not tend to stay alive for long. the prisoners who survived out there had turned monstrous, cannibalistic. they had given in entirely to their worst natures, gone mad from isolation, and regressed to cave man tactics ( it's mad max. it's just... mad max ).
freeing yourself of the asylum was extraordinarily difficult. you had to be rich, extremely rich. and with the majority of the population living in poverty, it was near impossible. the same one percent who controlled the wealth, were the same one percent who controlled the planet's skies. try to escape without permission, you're shot down, labelled a deserter. dead.
john has very few memories of his childhood. but he remembers this - running. no older than six. holding onto a young woman's hand, no older than twenty. a sibling, perhaps... maybe a cousin? he's never asked. they don't speak about it. she has a bump. was she pregnant? he remembers running... but a blink, and they fall. she's falling. men surround her. she's screaming. he's crying, as she's dragged away. they're separated.
john was nineteen, when he found a way off the asylum. not by choice, but by demand. sold into gangs at a young age, teamed up with... a man who would've sold him for a corn chip. and he did. job goes wrong. and he's considered a prisoner of war. in the asylum, certain people... well. piss off the wrong folks, and there's punishment. he had quite the reputation. so - called found family couldn't claim him, after he'd been caught. rival gangs wouldn't take him, after he'd made a fool of them over, and over, and over again.
he was set to be thrown to the savages, before a third party intervened. knew his reputation. paid good money for him. money was everything, in the asylum. his people wiped their hands of him. and once again, he was sold to another. paired up with a pretty little poster boy. he promised to ruin him as soon as they stepped into that elevator in a hidden corner of the end of the universe - and he did.
