Buchanan

Michael Buchanan

Brawler // Ex-Animals member // Fugitive

Name	Michael Buchanan
Role	Solo
Occupation	Brawler/Bodyguard
Status	Active
Affiliation	Animals

Appearance

Slow, heavy movements mark the 6'5" (195 cm) frame standing in front of you—the deliberate pace of a man who has spent years working the streets and no longer feels the need to impress anyone. His bearing is rough and blunt, matching a coarse disposition that shows in both posture and presence. It isn’t his height that makes him stand out in a crowd, but the massive, thick span of his shoulders, broad enough to give him a slightly oversized, almost gargantuan appearance.

A pair of green eyes above a slightly crooked nose and the proud jut of a strong jaw complete what could be a handsome face if it weren't for the ugly almost perma-sneer on his full lips. Smooth black skin is the cover of this man's body. Adorning his head is buzzed straight onyx hair, narrow enough to look like a very short mohawk. His left ear looks permanently damaged with slight cauliflower ear.

A black long-sleeved shirt is made from a light-weight knit fabric that is warm enough to stave off the chill but not too heavy to impede movement or get too warm, hugging the torso comfortably. It is a pull-over style shirt with a rounded collar with three buttons down the front, also in black. It has an even hem-line and comfortable cuffs at the wrists. He is wearing a large brown leather bomber jacket that manages to hang a little loose on his frame. The flashes of interior that can be spied are of a black cotton-wool material.

A pair of relaxed-fit jeans is belted around his waist in a looser fit that allows for plenty of protection from the sturdy sky blue fabric but also range of motion for climbing, and running. They look well-stitched with a front zipper and button enclosure, a pair of front pockets, and a smaller pair of back pockets. On his feet, he wears a pair of black leather combat boots. Able to take a scuffing and keep scuffling, they lace up tight a little past his ankles, with heavy black soles to give him traction, tread, and threat.

Background

Born in 2034 in the rotting bones of Pacifica, he never knew a soft day. His mother ran with a low-tier Animals crew until a rival boostergang left her bleeding out in a flooded parking structure when he was nine and his pops was nowhere to be seen. The Animals took him in the only way they knew how—threw him into the deep end and told him to swim or drown. He swam.

By sixteen he was already a problem. Big, mean, and fast with his hands. Buchanan earned his keep cracking skulls for the gang and selling his fists as muscle to anyone who could pay around Pacifica. Bodyguard work, debt collection, pimping and pit fights in the old resorts and and finally some decent underground prize fights. The eddies were rolling in and some of the Animals started taking on more riskier jobs. They were getting too cocky. Including Buchanan.

In 2069 while taking down a Militech AV that was heading to Texas, the hijacking went wrong and the AV crashed. Two of his gang members died and Buchanan was in no shape to fend off the police. He was captured, had his chrome ripped out and thrown into Sherman Disposal Center—one of those sprawling, for-profit hellholes that treated inmates like industrial waste. Which of course, they probably deserved.

Seven years. He survived the way Animals always do: by being harder, meaner, and more patient than the next bastard. He fought in the yard, fought in the showers, fought for food, for space, for the right to keep breathing. For one of the weeks food wasn't airdropped, Buchanan even resorted to cannibalism. Somewhere in the middle of it he stopped being a ganger and became something colder. When the chance came in 2076—a riot, a compromised maintenance tunnel, and a prisoner transport that wasn’t watched as closely as it should have been—he took it. Left three more bodies behind on the way out and never looked back.

You can lose yourself in Nighty City, so that is where he went back to. Older and hopefully wise enough to not get caught the way he did. For now he is staying away from the Animals, knowing that the NCPD would most likely be keeping an eye out if he did actually go back to his old crew. Buchanan needs to lay low. Make some eddies. Get his chrome back.

He's gotta survive.