My name is Guts and this is my story.

I was born in Australia in the middle of the Omnic Crisis and was taken in by a group of Wastelanders, at least that's what they're known as now, who said they found me being protected by my mother's body. As far as they could tell, she had been killed by Omnics and had given her life to protect me, and they decided to take me in because they felt bad for me.

I don't remember much of those times seeing as I was a baby, but from what I was told, we were constantly on the move. When I was about 2 and a half, the Omnic Crisis was put to a stop thanks to Overwatch and we were able to finally semi-settle down. I say semi because even though we didn't have to run away from the Omnics anymore, we still had to move every now and then to find food and water.

But unlike the rest of the world which was able to bounce back with not much difficulty, Australia was nearly destroyed. The once great nation was reduced to a mere shell of its former self. The major population centers were left ravaged much less the Outback which was already doing poorly before the war. Then a few years later, the Australian Government did something that caused the final nail in the coffin to be struck.

The Australian Government decided to gift the country's omnium and the area surrounding it, to the Omnics because they wanted to establish peace with them. This caused a lot of people to be displaced, including our group. And these were people that had experienced the war, run from the war, lost loved ones to the war, and that did not sit well with them.

Some were just upset, as was in their right to be, but others were furious and decided they would do something about it. So, they formed the Australian Liberation Front to destroy the omnium and the omnics, to get their land back. And unfortunately, the group that I was part of was one such group that was furious.

I was 7 when the government decided to hand over the land to the Omnics and I was living with the group of nomads that had picked me up when I was a baby. Life was okay. Food and water were a little hard to get but our group was better off than some others. And the reason for that was that we had a few veterans and hunters in our group that taught the others, including the kids, how to find food and water. And while we did have firearms, we were taught how to use primitive bows and small swords to save ammunition. And boy were they happy to have saved that ammunition.

When the group heard that they were being displaced because of the government giving the land to the Omnics, they went into a fury. They nearly rushed the omnium themselves before they came to their senses and decided to look for others that would want to do the same. So, in some ways, the group I was a part of could be called the founders of the ALF.

Anyway, soon after that they formed the ALF and began to think about ways to destroy the omnium. I knew their strategy because they talked about it in the open, knowing that everyone around them supported their plan. At first, they had a real strategy, but as they continued talking it devolved into a simple plan of rushing the omnium with enough firepower to take out the whole thing. And that's what they did.

Over the next few months, the ALF would rush the omnium, cause damage, and then retreat before doing the same thing the next time. It all came to an end when they decided they would get rid of them once and for all by blowing up the fusion core. That's when shit hit the fan.

The fusion core blowing up caused an explosion that destroyed the facility, irradiated the region, and littered the Outback with twisted metal and wreckage for kilometers around. The Outback became almost unlivable to most, but there were some who survived. Like me.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to escape the irradiation area in time, nor would I have been able to. But the first wave of radiation that went out when the bomb exploded caused a lot of people to die almost immediately, and I was nearly one of them.

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I remember the pain that I felt from the radiation. It was like nothing I had ever felt before. I could feel my cells dying, my skin burning, and my body deteriorating before I passed out.

The next time I awoke, I could still feel the radiation but for some reason, I felt better. I felt stronger than ever. Then I got up and looked around me only to see that the group that I was with was gone. There were no signs of them. They had left me because they thought I was dead.

From then on, I had to survive on my own. I wandered the radiated Wasteland going from area to area, scavenging anything I could to eat and drink. And I learned early on that I was going to have to fight to survive.

The first time I encountered a feral Omnic, was about a month into my wandering. I found an old settlement and was about to scavenge it when an Omnic came busting out of one of the buildings and tried to tackle me to the ground. Thankfully because of my newfound mutation, I was able to react in time to dodge. I then got the pipe that I carried with me for protection and swung it at Omnic with enough force to destroy it. But that wasn't the last feral Omnic I encountered.

Over the next couple of years, I encountered a lot of enemies, both feral Omnics and Wastelanders, that wanted to capture me to eat, sell, kill me for my things, or just kill me. I ended up using whatever weapon I could to fight but eventually settled on using a giant slab of metal that I fashioned into a sword. Due to my mutated body, I was able to swing it with ease and eventually got quite masterful with it.

And as I wandered the Wasteland, I eventually came across Junkertown, a dirty and dangerous settle constructed from the ruins of the Australian omnium, and home to the Junkers. I only stayed there for a few days but I had to fight a couple of people who wanted to steal my stuff and kill me.

But before I could leave, I was surrounded by the guards of Junkertown who escorted me to see the King. He told me that he had heard of a young kid with a giant slab of metal for a weapon that was causing trouble. I told him I was just protecting myself, but he ignored me. Then he told me that if I wanted to leave the place alive I would have to fight in the Scrapyard and win five times. And not seeing any way to escape alive, I agreed.

Obviously, I won the five fights against humans and omnics before the King decided that he was going to force me to stay and fight until I died. That's when I decided to wait until nighttime came before escaping. After that, the King put a bounty on my head and that started my life of being a bounty target that had no chance of peace.

Now, it's been years since then and I've had to kill many bounty hunters and Junkers that want to claim the bounty for themselves. In the beginning, I was annoyed but now I'm used to it.

But besides escaping bounty hunters, I also became a mercenary that did jobs for whoever paid for me, as long as it was within my moral code.

And on one of those jobs, I met the now Junker Queen, Odessa Stone.

I was in the Burning Lands finding an item that a client wanted when I came across a tall muscular woman with blue hair and a wild temperament around her. Unfortunately, she must have thought I was a raider or looking to kill her because the first thing she did when she saw me was throw a knife at me that I dodged. Then we fought for a good few minutes, and all the while I was telling her that I wasn't there to kill her but she didn't believe me.

I was able to knock her on her back before placing my sword slab on her throat and telling her I was looking for an item for a client. She relented and said she believed me so I let her get up. Then we got to talking and I found out she was at the Burning Lands to kill the Five Metal Demons which were apparently five omnics that "cursed" the Burning Lands.

I told her good luck before I continued to search for the item that I was tasked to find, but I ended up at the same place as her. Apparently, the item my client wanted me to find was within the Five Metal Demons' cave. So, I waited for her there and when she saw me I told her why I was there. She told me I would be able to get it but if I helped or interfered with her fight, she would kill me.

After the fight, I went inside the cave and saw her standing on top of five big destroyed Omnics, laughing like a maniac. Leaving her to her laughter, I searched the cave before finding what I needed. Then she caught up to me and told me she was going to Junkertown next, to become the Queen.

I told her good luck and that I would visit if she did so, and left to give my client their item.

Once that was done, I made my way to Junkertown where I saw a poster with Stone's face on it saying she was the new Queen. I smirked at that before I entered the place and was immediately surrounded by guards that took me to see the Queen.

There she asked me to be her bodyguard and she would stop the bounty. I agreed and have been her bodyguard since.

And that's my story so far.

~

"A mercenary again, eh?" said Guts.