[i]There was no place like home, the old saying went. No place like the Outback, full of dangerous critters and plantlife that'd kill you more than help you. Some would call natives crazy, but only some of them were. And even then, the damn Omnics seemed to make the desert landscape more of a hellhole than it already was. Raging heat complimented by emotionless robots constantly attacking, always an onslaught against the humans occupying the land. To top off the madness, the government signed a peace treaty with the bots. A peace treaty! With the omnics that would rather see them dead!

The Australian Liberation Front had an answer to that, an answer of violence and explosions. One which altered the very way of life of those in the Outback. A detonation like no other at the Omnium which produced the bots resulted in a nuclear fallout that swept along the Outback like a blazing fire, irradiating everything in its path. Jamison Fawkes had been a simple man, a resident of the Outback, a smart man who somehow wound up living in the middle of the desert. But after the radiation changed everything, changed him and the way his mind ticked, Jamison was no more.

He'd donned scraps of clothes, fashioned his own explosives out of the wreckage, picked up scrap through the radiated wasteland like the madman he'd become. He and some other fellas had made themselves a living among the scrap, peddling it for what they could, building anew and dismantling anything salvageable they could get their grimy hands on. Called themselves Junkers. His name became simple, easy to say, easy to remember, and exactly what he was. Junkrat, scrounging the wastes like a rat in search of cookie crumbs, had been born from the radiation.[/i]

[hr][hr]

It'd only been a month since he'd found [i]it[/i] in the ruins of the old, radiation-plagued Omnium, and already he had bounties on his head from those in charge. After he'd killed off his fellow Junkers because he knew they'd be greedy and want to take it from him, Junkrat traveled until he found a place small and secure, where he could rest for a little while. Hunker down and think of is next move. What would he even do with the damn thing? It was [i]so valuable[/i], should he just keep it like a trophy, or sell it to the highest bidder, or just bury it somewhere like a squirrel with a nut? The possibilities were endless, but damn it, he didn't have time to think with these nearly constant attacks from bounty hunters most likely sent from the Queen. That bitch, always giving him a hard time.

He'd found the town of Marla. Used to be a tiny tourist destination, now just scraps of buildings no one lived in for years. Good place to try to get some plotting done, if nothing else. He'd set up in a ramshackle little building that appeared to have been a petrol station at one point in time, though there was no certainly if it had been in use prior to the Omnium explosion. Not that it mattered anyways.

There was a storage room in the back with an intact door. All it took was some old-fashioned elbow grease and the crafty former-Junker had made a makeshift lock to hold the door shut for now. It wouldn't hold against any kind of grenade or anything of the sort, but it'd take some effort from your average scrappy bounty hunter to get through. By the time they got through it, Junkrat would make an escape through a hatch in the ceiling. Used to be part of an air ventilation system, but whatever had once been there had fallen through and now there was a big square hole in the ceiling. The building itself was pretty short, so if Junkrat stood straight up and reached his hands all the way up, then jumped, he could grab onto the edge and pull himself up. From the roof, he'd jump on down and run off wherever he could.

Sitting on the floor, facing the walk, Junkrat scrawled on the wall with a piece of chalk, trying to plan out his next move. Head out of the Outback, try to find a buyer? No, he hated associating with civvies. Especially suits. Those scheming bastards were always out for themselves. Junkrat laughed at this thought; he wasn't so different from a suit, all things considered. He was out for himself right now! Hah!

"Alright jamie, let's see here, what can we do with this..." He muttered to himself, bringing a hand to his chin in contemplation. He'd run out of chalk eventually, but writing things down always helped sort things out in his head. Stuff tended to get pretty scrambled up there. Staying focused was hard. Writing things down helped him keep focus on what he needed to do, and helped him remember how to make things. He had blueprints for the stuff he had with him; his trusty frag launcher, his concussion mines, his steel bear traps, and his personal favorite... a motorized explosive tire he could control remotely. He carried the tire on his back, and with how heavy it was, he hunched over because of it. But it was damn worth it to see the explosion in the distance, killing off anyone who wanted to steal from the one and only Junkrat.