Shamus "Bucky" Wallace

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IamLEAM1983
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Shamus "Bucky" Wallace

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Name: Shamus “Bucky” Wallace
Age: 156 years old
Gender: male
Species: Kitaiteki, unique model

Strengths: blessed with Gorobei Iwata's original strength, speed and fairly surprising agility, Shamus's arms are designed with high-pressure hydraulic pistons that put Archie's own enhanced human capabilities to shame. Lifting objects weighing a literal ton is something he can accomplish with a bit of effort, and everyday circumstances present most of us with a slew of objects weighing several hundred pounds. Flipping cars over with a punch is something he can do without that much effort, this also translating into the ability to ground himself against fast-moving objects of a similar weight. He's stopped speeding cars dead with a single hand and held together opposite ends of a severed high tension cable to prevent one of the bridges crossing the Hillard from collapsing.

His rather tough hide is fashioned from unusual applications of the same alloy techniques used to create katana blades. With harder, brittle iron cores encased in softer, more flexible steel, his weight was at least partially managed and mitigated, while still giving him a tremendous amount of resistance to impacts. The kind of blows another Clank or a supernatural could land are needed to get past his carters and potentially sever his limbs. Modern-day tank-busting rounds would quite certainly pierce his hide, but as these weapons are fairly difficult for the average Joe to maintain and operate, most of what he finds himself facing involves the comparative bee stings of sniper rounds or regular firearms. As Bucky has regularly thrown himself over innocents in order to protect them from gunfire, even the Drifter equivalent to an Ingram Mac-10 would leave him merely feeling ornery from all the stinging.

Notably, however, Wallace's signature weapon is his odachi blade, a normally ceremonial weapon characterized by its unusual length and size. A little over five feet tall, possessed of a traditional edge on one side and band saw-like indentations on the other, “The One Who Belongs to the Warring Mountain” is designed in order to be used along with the Thousand Strikes technique, one which is exclusive to this very armature. Essentially, Bucky is able to turn his blade into a jackhammer's primary implement, his rapidly solicited pistons eliciting small, if extremely powerful impacts at the tail end of an initially slow and powerful strike. Using this, Shamus has done everything from impacting concrete blocks and walls until only smithereens remain to cut his way through thick trees – the blade comically producing the same loud, shearing noise as a chainsaw's teeth biting into bark and pulp.

Against organic targets, the results are fairly obvious. That is, if the attack hits. The armature is built for sheer power as well as a relative amount of speed, and Bucky does have access to smaller, faster and weaker movements based on attacking with the very tip of his blade. By definition, however, his entire self is built to favour a “one and done” approach to combat. While he can't quite one-shot targets he doesn't have the room or time to swing for, he can, at the very least, use his sword's length as a means to keep problematic targets at bay. In the case of the unavoidable zombie uprising, for instance, he's been known to keep his scabbard on and simply prod corpses he was ordered to keep fairly intact out of harm's way. Similarly, using the flat of his blade allows him to swat undesirables away without too much collateral damage.

Being the product of a somewhat simpler design, Bucky is much more easy to service and maintain than Archie. Every few decades, the via-based pilot light that's hidden behind the little circular bump of his simulated “outie” needs to be recharged or replaced. His stomach's expansive steam reservoir needs to be scoured clean every so often, and his stored water must be changed once every three months, unless the idea of proceeding with a fairly lengthy de-scaling process isn't that much of a problem. His joints are otherwise extremely simple, oversized and fairly easy to reach for someone who has enough time to disassemble the plates covering each of them. His face, notably, is surprisingly primitive in comparison with Archie's. With a single hinge for his mouth and two swiveling points for his eyeballs and eyelids, along with fairly small gears controlling painted steel eyebrows, you can't quite expect him to be as susceptible to endemic failure, if one of his cogs break.

Shamus not being a terribly complex fellow with reams of backstory and deeply defining personal experiences, he tends to adapt fairly well to just about any change in scenery. Where Archie might display shock, dejection, annoyance or the sense of being overwhelmed, the former con man simply rolls with the punches. Considering, he's usually the first one of the two to be awakened, as he doesn't quite share Archie's occasionally angst-causing peals of awareness of the passage of time. Obsolescence isn't exactly something he has on the brain at any given moment, to be honest. If confronted with it, he tends to dismiss the currently newfangled cyborg modifications and enhanced organs as being some sort of fad. As far as he's concerned, Clanks still are and always will be where it's at.

Just don't tell him he's obviously biased, however.

Finally, his start-up procedure is fairly simple, compared to Archie's requirement of some patience and a good amount of manual dexterity. Just pour some sawdust in the reservoir, add a gallon of water, mix it up with a large wooden spoon until the consistency is fairly gruel-like, then slot the pilot light in, press down on it hard enough to hear a loud snap and wait a a minute or so for steam to build up. Before long, you'll be treated to a yawning and stretching Okie samurai who'll probably mutter something about food. After that, anything organic that includes some amount of moisture will suffice. His soul translates the need for more fuel as hunger, and both Iwata and Wallace have been known for their fairly Gargantuan appetites. Apparently everything burns adequately enough in this magically sustained furnace, with tougher materials like chicken bones or bigger chunks of wood maybe eliciting “burps” of steam before the furnace intensifies enough to decay these harder substances.
Weaknesses: some people have accused Bucky of not being the sharpest tool in the shed. To Archie went the “Eurekas” and the exclamations of “By Jove, there's the rub!”, while the American was quite happy to simply trundle along, his monstrous blade casually balanced on a shoulder. While he isn't dumb by any stretch of the imagination, Bucky's intelligence simply seems to follow along with the rest of his personality. It's slow, careful and extremely analytical, making it oddly adaptable to wild changes or suddenly available new environments and problems. While nothing much seems to throw his deductive processes out of the proverbial loop and leaves him as an extremely adaptable individual, situations where a bit of genius is required on the short term aren't his forte. If you present him with a problem to solve, you can expect him to assume a thoughtful look, slow pacing circles and the kind of muttered half-tunes some of us might pull out when trying to fit the pieces of a new puzzle together. Eventually, realization sinks in and lights up his entire features – usually well after Archie has managed to solve the same problem privately.

That ponderousness goes along with his sheer power. He might be able to cut cars in two with a good swing and a howled kiai, but anybody who's even remotely nimble will have ample time to duck underneath the blade or dodge its sweeping or scything arc. Under Archie's supervision, however, this has been partially mitigated by attempts to teach Shamus to thrust with the tip of his sword at quickly altered angles. This buys back a fair amount of speed and unpredictability, but only provides the Kitaiteki with a fraction of his potential stopping power. Some Judo and Jiujitsu elements have been integrated in order to teach him to work close to unarmed opponents, but the Okie has a hard time not falling back to his personal instinct of simply bringing his fists up for a fairly basic and uncoordinated toss-up.

Then, there's the fact that armatures that are the sole property of a single individual for decades on end tend to be scarred on the etheric level. Shards and smidgens of Gorobei Iwata's self remain, permanently encased in the machine's spiritual confines. These include the man's voice and a fragmentary memory of Japanese terms and customs, along with cold embers of his personality. Knock Bucky out and you might find yourself faced with an eighth or a tenth of a man, speaking Japanese and wildly attacking those around him out of sheer fear and panic. This only ever lasts a few seconds, thankfully enough, but makes the prospect of rousing Wallace during his sometimes troubled hypnagogic sleep or his occasional bouts of sleepwalking a tricky proposition.

Exams have shown that considering the cheap nature of the transfer that gave Shamus control over this old and exotic frame, he is especially susceptible to being hijacked remotely or of being forcibly removed and replaced. 1975 saw quick and dirty attempts at strengthening the American soul's hold over the Nippon body, but lack of time and of future maintenance has left these quick protective measures feeling rather weak and easy to circumvent for anyone with the right hardware and some patience.

Appearance: at seven feet sharp and a slightly altered mass of three hundred and fifty pounds, Bucky tends to fit the definition of a behemoth to a tee. With a solid and fairly rectangular build designed to offer maximum stability and balance, he essentially stands as the opposite of Archie's resolutely sedate design and construction.

The first thing you'll notice, is that he seems to be constructed following the appearance of your average Japanese Feudal suit of armour, with reinforced steel plates lacquered in a deep red and the rare sighting of exposed joints and intersected elements of his “skin” showing a deep, blue-black finish that is mostly the product of over a century of careful lubrication with a much greasier and stickier compound than your average Clank oil. If anything, he looks like a fully armoured samurai who would've thought it funny to wear the usual undergarments associated with the expected suit over the armour pieces, instead of under.

Notably, his upper shoulder plates, representing the Sode plates of a traditional armour, are the only ones to be worn on top of his usual clothing. Otherwise, the fairly ordinary tabi flip-flop sandals, the hakama and hitatare to be expected are all present on top of his armour plates. Where they further differ from the norm is in the robe's design, which seems cut in order to expose part of the oddly and carefully forged man-boobs as well as most of Bucky's very round and generous abdomen. The pants being cut out of white linen, his robe is in two tones of green and cinched below his navel with a simple white sash. As said above, his navel is actually the outer pressure-based switch of his pilot light. Manage to slip something sturdy and thin between the stomach and his outie, and might be able to force the pilot light and its cover to pop right out of their lodging. Thankfully, while pushing them in is fairly easy, pulling the pilot out requires either supernaturally strong fingernails, an invulnerability to the fairly excruciating pain of lifting your nails off your fingers out of excessive pressure – or the appropriate multitool, which wasn't exactly mass-produced.

Otherwise, his face is rather unique. The Machine Men of Japan not being terribly concerned with preserving their humanity, most went for fairly alien designs inspired by insects or particularly nimble mammalian relatives of Man. Iwata, however, wasn't one to want to abandon the familiarity of certain human limitations, for the sake of his sword's ease of use. At best, he's outfitted his mechanical face with the likeness of a tengu mask, a single-hinged mouth being limited to up-down motions and eyebrows doing most of the required emoting. Oddly enough, the long-nosed and slightly googly-eyed fellow manages to look expressive and personable, largely in part thanks to Shamus' sympathetic personality. Coincidentally, Wallace's Irish roots are winked at thanks to Iwata's fortuitous choice of preserved fox fur as a means to create the impressive red-orange chops and sideburns that more than likely appeared striking, out in the Japanese countryside.

Here in Hope, all they do is mark Bucky as a fairly grizzled-looking “ginger”, which amuses him to a degree.

He can't do much with his face, but additional gestures from other parts of the body seem to be able to fill in the blanks. Belly-thrusting guffaws, emphatic winks coupled with surprisingly controlled elbow nudges, fairly superhuman eye-rolling abilities to indicate confusion or annoyance as well as doubts about an ally's sanity, cartoonishly droopy eyelids and postures for sheer boredom, dejection or depression – a wide panoply of enhanced or exxagerated physical routines seems to have been instinctively developed by Bucky, to the point where you'd be hard-pressed to notice his face is actually fairly lifeless. You'd also have a hard time believing this body didn't always host a lovable goofball and could also be put to use in fairly terrifying ways.

While Bucky has certain problems with modern appliances, you'll also notice that everyday physical contacts are things he's successfully mastered. Despite his size and sheer brawn, he seems perfectly able to shake hands with others, to playfully nudge you or sock you one on the shoulder. He can handle children and infants safely and has protectively hugged his fair share of people, in order to protect them from falling debris, flames or bullets. He, for instance, instinctively knows how to tackle a living person to push them out of harm's way, without his size and constituting matter inflicting more than surface bruises.

Being only “half-Japanese”, as he puts it, there's times where the loose robes and the kabuto will become too much for him to endure. He'll sometimes be seen trading the traditional regalia for khakis or knee-length shorts, fairly American and kitschy flip-flops and some sort of almost purposefully horrid green-and-white Hawaiian shirt. Archie's had a pie-tailed tuxedo tailored for special occasions, but the poor guy has a hard time not ruining its effect about five minutes after spotting the after-party's buffet.

Oddly enough, Shamus tends to return to the hitatare and hakama as night-time apparel. You could argue the Oriental trousers are roomier than the norm, so they make a good choice for placid evenings where getting the fireplace going and swallowing flies on your encased mattress feels like a good plan.
Behaviour: “take it slow” is liable to be the Japanese Clank's unofficial axiom, judging by the way he approaches life and its many challenges. He never seems more happy as when he's allowed to excessively sleep in, his average gait is a bit on the lumbering side, and his favourite activities involve reading while sprawled on his mattress, or similarly lying down in the grass in the back of Holden Hall's back yard, a reasonably thick tree branch being used absently, a bit like an oversized toothpick, to scrub the vacuum tube that starts at the top of his throat. Looking up to the clouds, allowing himself to become lost in his thoughts and simply enjoying the moment are things he's particularly good at. If anything, he tends to be a little annoyed by types who always seem to be itching for something to do or for something to happen. Without being particularly aware of it or cognizant of the finer points of Zen Buddhism, he absolutely is at peace with himself and the world – regardless of the trouble he finds himself faced with. Perhaps that's because he tends to mistakenly feel he doesn't have the brain cells to devote to panicked attempts at problem-solving.

On the other hand, others have been mistaken in assuming this mechanical oaf was just as dispassionate as its British pal. It'd be more fair to say Bucky tends to save his passion for things that matter, such as friends, food, drinks, good fights and a fair bit of adventure.

Death and taxes? Eh. He'd much rather snooze those away. His own obsolescence? Meh, that's really up to Archie and the others to determine. Even if he's sometimes around only to ogle at the team's fridge, he enjoys being there to sit around with them, in case his less nervous outlook on life makes him find the solution to a problem they just can't solve. Archie's obsolescence? Hmph. He'd really rather his buddy didn't drive himself up the wall with this. There's all sorts of techno-whatsits around anyway, who's to say they won't eventually find a way to pay for modern armatures for the both of them? Even then, he holds, Archie wouldn't be Archie without his armature. The former Kitaiteki tends to look to modern society's obsession with perfection with a fairly nonchalant and critical eye. If you gave him the choice between keeping his current body and getting one with a fake six-pack and an extremely compact and lightweight physique, he'd refuse. He enjoys thinking of himself as “the big guy”, as the vintage model that makes kids go Whoa even as he's just cruising along the pedway with his hands behind his back and bits and pieces of Japanese trad mingling with Bluegrass on his lips. His own size amuses him, and reaching down to ruffle the hair of some beaming kid who remembers him from his days as a museum artifact never gets old.

Even so, a few hours spent with him makes it clear he has practically no ego. Everyone he meets is a potential buddy, everyone is equally interesting and everyone's input matters, but he does have problems asserting his own opinions, again largely because he sees his own stabs at intellection as being less worthy than the musings of others.

On the other hand, his past as a con man makes him rather uncannily good at sniffing out lies and fabrications. While computers and game consoles leave him with a dose of mild confusion and a complete lack of interest, while some of Archie's violin concertos send him off into rather sonorous snoring fits, his slow mind suddenly spikes up a little when the usual machinations of the Commission are presented to him. The shyster in him recognizes the old tricks of the trade, making him an oddly perceptive self-made criminologist of sorts. With the same kind of casual lack of self-importance, he'll then give you his two cents on anything from the rodent's architectural firms and restaurants from a fiscal and financial point of view to Winters' chief reliance on watering holes and the Irish-American sentiment as means to garner and accrue capital.

Past all this, however, you're liable to get to know him as an excessively patient listening ear, a steadfast drinking buddy (if you're okay with the idea of him drinking a barrel's worth of the stuff while you sip at one beer) an eager companion for goofing around or harmlessly teasing the Shieldies and the kind of guy who makes vegging out look so comfy that you just might grow envious of his ability to find the right tree in Centennial Park under which to pretend he's reading. Fast-forward a few hours, and either Sophia or a city employee will have to shake him awake a few minutes before closing time, being maybe a tad regretful of disrupting the kind of borderline pastoral kip that looked blessedly comfortable.

If there's ever a problem that makes him maybe a tad nervous, it's usually a lady-related problem. A bit of a clumsy, well-meaning and hopeless romantic, what he lacks in creativity he makes up for in spontaneity. While Archie will need every ounce of strength he has and months of preparation to conservatively declare he still is “rather fond” of Sasha Grey, Shamus' approach to courting is very North-American and decidedly contemporary.

Unsurprisingly, Iwata's rare and nocturnal visitations present a complete reversal of Bucky's mellow personality. Obsessive, calculative, quick to the point of neurosis, brash and violent, there isn't much left of the old samurai other than a consistently renewed sense of confusion, fear and raw aggression. Irony has seen to it that when all is said and done, the American illiterate country boy is more of a samurai and a better Buddhist than even the Kansai-born former warlord, whose phylactery has been lost.

As far as anyone knows, Gorobei Iwata's complete personality was probably picked up and discarded somewhere along the docks, in 1910. Bucky would surmise that the poor guy probably got tossed out in the Hillard, where the sea's currents would have washed the phylactery out into the open Atlantic.
Goals: if he can help it, to eat and sleep his way through the current crisis, with a couple dozen books wedged here and there, a few weekly trips to the bar and as many summer barbecues as humanly possible. Fighting things is a nice aside, but between skewering Abominations with his blade and enrolling in a hot dog-eating contest, Option B is much more his speed.

Like Archie, he isn't too hot about the idea of going at the next few decades entirely alone. Shield Act, Schmield Act – all he really wants and needs is people to talk to and reasons to have a few good laughs without dwelling on the fact that his oil-grease concentrations are getting harder to guarantee.

If anything, having Archie around as his one and only steadily reliable anchor is getting a tad frustrating. Holden can't manage displays of kinship other than quickly dispensed grins or the occasional awkward bop in his ample stomach, and the whole “bromance” thing has its limits. Removing the B from that word is starting to feel like something he'd like to try out. The trick is finding a special someone who won't mind his rather metallic, if thankfully comfortably warm self.

History: born in 1869 in a small farm belonging to his parents just two miles East of Stillwater, Oklahoma, Shamus Wallace would spend most of his youth and young adult life being torn between two worlds. His father, Otis, was a first-generation Irish immigrant to America, and very much a product of the fairly harsh agricultural conditions of his homeland, near his homeland's shores. This made Otis a rather hard-working man who provided well enough for his wife Bess and their sons, but Shamus seemed to be destined to be the odd one out. Built like an ox and yet more prone to lazing about or sneaking in the barn for a quick nap, his own interests always had focused around reading and some degree of intellectual pursuits. He wasn't quite good at thinking on his feet, but he did appreciate hashing out the finer points of one of his latest reads with his mother. Unfortunately, she wasn't terribly literate and his father had no patience for so-called “smart” folk, who he believed couldn't pull their own weight around a farm to save their lives. This led to a fairly rough first set of seventeen years and to Shamus' finally giving up and deciding he'd be better off in the north.

Unfortunately, being a ponderous farm hand meant he didn't have much in the way of formal skills. The further up and along the East Coast he progressed, the more he found himself confronted with fairly menial tasks he frankly had trouble feeling involved in. Boredom having always led to unplanned naps in his case, his ability to stick to jobs was severely hampered. By the time he'd turned nineteen, he'd tried working the docks, factories and other farms, but something was always missing; something that would keep him involved and interested. He tried finding it in books, but had the most rotten luck about finding the right moment to crack open a novel on the job. That also cost him a few positions.

Turned 24, he'd managed little more than finding his way to Boston with no money, no prospects, less muscle mass and more fat, a fairly impressive backlog of books considering he'd only ever finished part of his high school curriculum – and a small catalog of hustles and tricks that got him enough to survive on his own. He wasn't the most ambitious of all con men, but he did have a handle on his sales pitch for dissolved cinnamon and brown sugar mixed with tap water and sold as a miracle tonic for ridiculously high prices... When that one ran out, he'd sell shares for pharmaceutical companies that were about to implode, or push encyclopedia subscriptions that came complete with an overpriced wooden cabinet, and simply pocket the cash. In every city he entered, he caused his own luck to run out within a few short months. He alternated between jail time for petty theft and embezzlement and trying his hardest to squeeze out some kind of living outside of the same old odd jobs.

By 1905, he'd made his way to Hope, and found himself working with Pat Callahan, Michael's fairly carefree older brother. While Mike was well on the way to making his dream of becoming an officer come true, Patrick also seemed to live for the next con or hustle. The catch was that he was faster on his feet, faster on the draw – and interested in the big leagues. Specifically, the Sicilians in town were of some interest to him, the Bizzi clan having moved in from Syracuse, Sicily with the express intent of organizing the Italian community. What began as simple protectionist measures would very quickly give rize to Don Alfonzo Bizzi's desire of becoming Capo di tutti capi in Hope.

As any Social Studies teacher could tell you, the Irish and Italian communities in America spent quite some time holding a bitter enmity for one another on the criminal spectrum. With both groups wishing to muscle in to garner profits from the local businesses, it'd be some time before Lucky Luciano would arise as a leading figure amid the 1930's open gang warfare and would instigate the first of many criminal Commissions, from atop the Waldorf-Astoria's penthouse floor. By 1906, this was only a glimmer in most wiseguys' eyes, a suggestion that was thrown around more as a joke than actually seriously considered. This made Patrick's offer to Don Alfonzo, Weasel's great-grandfather, a rather new precedent in Hope's history. Even with Jimmy Winters as a moderating influence, men on both sides of the fence found more than enough ways to disregard their bosses' orders of surface-level civility.

Thankfully, however, Bucky was a good show-runner. Gambling rings were put together, arcane duel rings and more common fight clubs were organized, and efforts were made to try and tap into the docks' offered access point to the outside world. Structurally, Wallace did a stand-up job. Financially, after years of struggling to put enough money for the rent together, he slipped up once more and forgot his place, allowing himself to line his pockets with a little money on the side.

Things were looking good. His clothes were decent, he'd lost some weight and outside of his one and only string on his violin, he was an upstanding citizen. Properly managed cons meant he had time enough to read, time enough to eat, time enough to walk around town and time enough to sleep.

By 1910, however, everything changed.

In the meantime, Gorobei Iwata, a meticulously maintained Kitaiteki of some 165 years, was on the prowl. In 1870, a gaijin snake by the name of Archibald had seen it fitting to intervene in matters that had never required the involvement of barbarians. Mutsuhito Meiji had given his support to the reformist Shogun Yoshinobu Tokugawa, and the Machine Men of Nippon could not let this stand. Notably, Gorobei Iwata is said to have killed an entire detachment of Yoshinobu's forces, which had been sent to punish the dissident bakufu, or Shogunate officials. A long-time supporter of the now defunct warlord, Oda Nobunaga, Iwata believed Japan to be fundamentally shaped by the Feudal Era. Any attempt to Westernize or supposedly modernize Japan was seen, to his eyes, as an act of high treason. If anything, the Kitaiteki were proof enough that Japan had no factual need for Western industry or trade – or so he believed. Without Sengoku, in essence, there could be no Japan.

It was already too late to stem the tides of change, of that much the hulking automaton was aware. With barbarian court members and even assassins, in some cases, it seemed very clear that Japan was to connect with the outside world, no matter what. Filled with spite and longing for a fairly romantic and blood-spattered view of his homeland, Gorobei, ideologically defeated, sought to slay the impudent English fop who had laid his plans to rest and seemingly permanently lamed his right arm. Coercion and murder had gotten him the spy's last known location, and bullying had secured him passage on a freighter returning to America. He intended to travel from New York to Hope, repeat the process to find his nemesis' residence, and kill him in his sleep a second time, as he had heard that this had been the cowardly rat's first demise. It seemed fitting to him that he deny Holden what he considered to be a good death.

In November of that year, Gorobei reached Hope, the crisp autumn weather playing havoc with his right arm's joints. Not having exactly cared about finding money and not speaking a lick of English, he was forced to coerce a black market outlet to “back up” his soul while fairly profound maintenance procedures would be taking place on his afflicted shoulder and elbow.

The same day saw Shamus being beaten awake by Don Alfonzo's men, the leading anthro regretfully informing that for the repeat observation of “irregularities” in the operation ledgers, they'd have to make a withdrawal. Having dodged all polite attempts at questioning before and utterly exhausted the Don's arguably decent levels of patience, there was little else for them to do than to take the slowest of the two con men, kill him, and set him up for Patrick Callahan to find...

Desperate, Shamus managed to escape. Shots were fired, with one of them nicking his femoral artery. Adrenaline preventing him from noticing the injury and the outside air being almost as cold as the numbness that spread throughout his lower limbs, the burly Irishman didn't notice he was done for until it was too late. Finding himself in the docks with enough money to buy a new life for himself somewhere safe but with nowhere safe to go to, he had nothing else to do but one last con. One last hustle he had to run, in order to save his life.

He picked the first soul transfer outlet he found, largely based on the fact that the fairly blazé engineer was working on a hulking piece of Japanese tech. Pulling out a gun and his wad of cash, he forced the techie to drop what he was doing and to set up a transfer for one of the cheaper models. As soon as the poor man's attention was distracted by the money, he knocked him unconscious with the butt of the weapon and set about haphazardly putting together what he needed to claim that life-saver of a hunk of iron.

Sheer luck allowed him to invade Gorobei's former body right after the end of the upkeep on his damaged right arm. The tattered remains of Iwata's identity bleeding into his own sense of Self, he found himself possessed of a fierce joy at the tought of the lesson he'd be able to give to these rats. The blade's associated techniques requiring a bit more time to surface, he settled with fairly devastating fisticuffs that would land Don Alfonzo in a wheelchair for the next several months.

Past that, however, with his would-be killers dead? He didn't know what to do anymore. His old self was still strapped to the transfer chair, now and was now cold and grey. The usually placid man didn't quite know what to do with all that panic and aimless energy, so he ultimately decided to trust one of the few bits of info Iwata's scars brought up : Holden Hall.

As could be expected, his greeting wasn't exactly a joyous one. Immediate aggression turned to shock once he opened his mouth, which allowed Bucky to realize Archie had known this armature's former owner!

A rather troubled night passed, with Shamus pushing all of Gorobei's images, sounds and instincts away and recounting his own travails to the former spy. With Shamus Wallace the man being quite obviously stone-dead, all attempts at prosecution against him would be dropped. Archie explained they could do the honest, righteous and nearly incredible thing and 'fess up to the local judges about this burly samurai's new owner – or they could conveniently shut up, seeing as the Gorobei Iwata chapter had never left the shores of the archipelago, and present Bucky as a returning old friend initially met in the eighteen-sixties.

For a while, they went with this. Much of the Pulp Era unfolded and nobody asked questions. Bucky was able to experience the sort of life he'd only ever dreamed of, with the two initial strangers becoming fast friends over their travels. Oddly enough, the armature's strength and ease at dealing with aggressive instances felt exactly like what his life had always missed. Far less nap-happy and much more active even if still squarely on the “placid” side of things, he saw the world, ate it, drank it and slept all over and underneath it. He read from the Greats and found a great many vistas to simply sit in front of and stare at. Every little thing Otis Wallace had beat him for was now vindicated. At times, Shamus could hardly believe his luck. Quiet sobs of sheer gratitude would sometimes quietly shake his shoulders at the sight of an African sunset or of the Alps' snow-capped majesty.

By the nineteen-fifties, nobody cared about Shamus Wallace the huckster and common criminal. All Hope's residence knew was that “the big guy” was loved by all, and that his checkered past had turned into more of an asset than an inconvenience. Whenever Archie couldn't quite connect the dots the way a two-time hoodlum would, any time a new adventure started with petty thievery and subterfuge in need of being elucidated, Bucky was there to chime in with his acquired savvy. Several burglaries were solved thanks to his ability to map out the ideal and most common hideouts and item stashes. By that time, unfortunately, that was all he could contribute. Steam and perpetual movement-based Clanks were woefully out of style, with rechargeable electric motors and early onboard electronics being all the rage. The market was pushing for faster, sleeker, more lifelike and responsive artificial bodies, with the two oldest Clanks being only solicited because of their personal usefulness and notoriety.

As machines, though? They were done for. Out.

Their first period of oblivion ended with their contributon to the Battle of Hope. Shamus barely had time to grasp the seriousness of the situation that it had already ended. Archie's cold feet and fairly pragmatic concerns about cost forced the two of them back into hibernation. Not dead, but not conscious or alive, they'd simply wait – museum fixtures patiently standing vigil.

2025 brings with it new life, new perils, new friends and new adventures. Bucky Wallace can only hope this new stint won't be as brief, and that they still have some usefulness left lying around. Failing that, he'll take new friends. New people, new books, new sunsets and clouds to gaze at.
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