Jack Jackson

"Look asshole, I been in the Federation military twenty eight years and I been pilotin' sixteen of 'em."

- Jack Jackson

Master Chief Jack Jackson is a non-commissioned officer and pilot in the 17th Mobile Suit Reserve Unit, a veteran of twenty eight years (sixteen as a pilot) and four wars. She gained significance for her role as a Titans officer in the years leading up to the Gryps Conflict and as a participant in the infamous gassing of a Side 1 Colony (which later became known as the Bunch 30 Incident). Later, however, she defected to the AEUG where she gained prominence as the founder and leader of ACOS Squad, a dedicated anti-terrorism squad which served in that capacity until UC 0095, when faulty intel and negligence on Jackson's part resulted in the annihilation of nearly the entire squad and Jackson's demotion to Master Chief.

Personality
Jack was never going to be normal. It's clear from the second she does pretty much anything: this isn't someone who could possibly have assimilated into society. The impartial observer at first glance gets the feeling that had she not ended up in the military, she'd probably have become some sort of serial killer or mass murderer: anyone who worked with her extensively during the One Year War and her time in the Titans knows that sentiment is true. Because Jack just isn't right in the head, even if she has changed very much since her days as a Titan. She's extremely violent, often for little to no reason, sometimes sees and hears things that aren't there, is constantly convinced of everybody's ill intent, and also has this whole little thing about hating most people for existing. Oh, also, she's a war criminal. And that's a big combination of things that you'd think equates to a big sign reading "DON'T GIVE THIS WOMAN A GIANT MACHINE OF DEATH", but shit, when has the Federation ever proven particularly perceptive about anything?

On her very best days, Jack is almost a 'good' person--or at least, almost a sane person: rough, fierce, stubborn, and it's possible to hold some semblance of a conversation with her, though how that conversation goes depends on how many of her interests you share. Then again, sometimes it's better to just stay away, because Jack doesn't have many 'very best days', and Jack at her best is always very likely to degenerate into Jack at her worst at the drop of a dime--and she becomes excessively violent, brutal, cruel, maniacal, savage, and immensely destructive, towards her enemies, towards her allies, and towards herself. She is a being driven and controlled almost wholly by her impulses, which she simply cannot control--it's just too much trouble, trying to control her rampant mental state, trying to stop herself every time she feels that burning need to simply lash out at everything, trying to figure out if it's even worth attempting to control it when she knows it'll never work. At one point, she just stopped trying. Just gave herself to it. Life is so much easier when you just give in and stop caring. So much easier when, instead of futilely seeking to subdue the need for violence, you satisfy it completely. So much easier when you just don't need to think before ordering the gassing of a colony, or the slaughter of a crowd of terrified civilians who just happen to be sympathetic to the cause of Zeon. So much easier when people are no longer living, breathing beings with feelings and thoughts and families--when people are simply other 'things' that are going to kill you if you don't kill them first. So much easier when life itself just doesn't mean a thing to you anymore.

The effects of what she became when she let herself fall into that thinking still follow her today.

Jack thought she'd had this world figured out a long, long time ago. Namely, that it was shitty. For her, life had meant an eternal struggle, eternal hardship and pain, and she didn't understand why people even wanted to deal with it. And it wasn't until later that she realised why--so that they could feed off one another's misery. She never realised she was the one who was fucked in the head--to the contrary, she thought everybody was, and in that sense she thought that mental aberrance wasn't even aberrance--it was just normal. It was years before any of that changed, as various experiences over her years of warfighting either drove her deeper into violence and mental dilapidation or enabled her to pull herself from that pit that was so simple, so easy, so freeing to fall into.

She tries--honestly tries. Tries for fear of what she may become if she does let herself completely fall. Sometimes it's unbelievably hard to keep herself from falling back into what she was before, but she knows what'll happen if she does. Instead, she sates the chaos and need for violence through war, the only way she knows of--has gotten so used to it that war has become her life, and she wouldn't know what she would do with herself without war. Even when she tries as hard as she can to control herself, to do good things and help others, ultimately, she feels she couldn't possibly control herself unless she had the thrill and adrenaline of war to fulfill the void present in her mind and soul--and she's right.

Skills & Abilities
If asked of her abilities as a mobile suit pilot, Jack is less likely to prattle off all her strengths and drawbacks as a pilot, and more likely to simply cite her kill count (which she's kept an obsessive count of since she became a pilot, and of which she is immensely proud). Her forte lies in close combat, where her drop-of-a-dime reactions and violent, impulsive style of fighting, both inside and outside the mobile suit, are best utilised: fighting at speeds that would and do disorient and confuse most pilots, armed with naught but a single beam sabre, Jack is very capable of effortlessly decimating multiple opponents in quick succession. She is not a tactical fighter by any stretch of the word, approaching each encounter instead as a war of attrition--the loss of her mobile suit's limbs, thrusters, and even visuals does not faze her, and serves only to provoke her to further brutality and violence. She is no stranger to emerging from an encounter with enemy suits with her own suit all but demolished--she doesn't care as long as it ups her kill count just a little more, the result being that to the outside observer Jack fights with all the ferocity and disregard for her own suit of a pilot who hardly cares whether she lives or dies--a pilot who lives for war and sees no purpose in existing unless she gives herself entirely to the spirit of war.

Jack is at best decent with ranged weapons such as beam rifles and machine guns, and grows progressively worse and worse at ranges that more well-rounded pilots could effectively fight at; given a sniper rifle, she is vastly more likely to use it as a club than to actually try her hand at sniping, which she is only all too aware she would be terrible at. As such, she is by no means a versatile fighter--her skills extend only as far as melee combat and skilled use of augmenting melee combat with missiles and rockets, but in ranged combat Jack falls dangerously short and depends on speed and recklessness to get her target within range of her beam sabres. Though this lack of versatility is unquestionably her most damaging failure and one she has several times suffered for, it speaks for itself that Jack amassed seventy one kills during the One Year War...a single month after so much as seeing her mobile suit for the first time.

Outside of the mobile suit, Jack's ten years as an EFSF marine come into play. At six feet and seven inches, with shoulders forty inches across and a robust, muscular physique, Jack wields immense physical strength, augmented by hand to hand combat training as a marine and years of experience as a street fighter prior to enlistment. She also brings to bear some skill with other weapons such as firearms and knives. She has also, on the odd occasion, displayed an unusual and generally unseen proclivity for intellect and is also at times to be seen in the company of a good book, though that in particular is a development only of the past eight or so years.

History
((Written in a highly informal, very....Jack-esque tone. Don't expect a clinical, formal history here.))

Throughout history, people have wondered what makes a psychopath psycopathic--what makes a psycho psychotic, and what drives a war criminal to commit horrendous acts of genocide and mass slaughter. Generally, it is agreed that to find the answer, one must look to the circumstances of their lives and their youths--which brings us to the question of what existence did Jack lead prior to the military life, what circumstances created the psychotic, violent, destructive war criminal she is now?

Good question, and good luck, because not even Federation records can tell anything of her youth--which is nothing unusual. When was the last time the Federation did anything efficiently except suck? All's anybody knows is that one day in UC 65, a seventeen year old woman whose ID claimed she was called 'Jack Jackson' enlisted in the Earth Federation Space Forces Marines. With little difficulty was it that she ended up in boot camp--where she realised that even at a mere seventeen years old, she was bigger and stronger than nearly everyone else here, and thus proceeded, in a definite sign of what was to come, to bully, intimidate, and tyrannise everyone around her. She wasn't stopped because...well, it's boot camp. The Federation had no way of knowing that this was much more than just the effects of their ruthless training regimes--they had no idea that the domineering, violent attitude of this recruit had its roots in something far deeper, far more malevolent and uncontrollable, and so she was not stopped. Jack took it as just further evidence that she was right--people were just like her. See, they weren't sayin' nothin', were they? Weren't doin' a thing to stop her, were they?

It was not long before Jack graduated from boot camp, destined for EFSF Marines Fifth Company, stationed in Side 6. For nearly ten years, from 0068 to 0077, they did almost nothing noteworthy beyond a nine year spree of street brawls, alcoholism, and occasional casual tyrannising of the local population. Man, those were the good days. Jack had plenty of fun, and became good friends with most of the marines. And the entire time, Jack watched (if a bit loosely, seeing as intersolar news were not of much concern to her in that interval), as things in the Federation began to change...drastically. In 0069, some colony declared independence and called itself something starting with a Z. The Federation, being the Federation, didn't do jack shit. It never occurred to Jack at that point that she was alive to witness the unfolding of events that would change the course of humanity indelibly forever--she just figured, meh, independent colony? We should bomb the shit out of them or something. Though Jack did predict (like many others) that eventually this new Princely Pals of Zion or whatever they were could not peacefully co-exist with the Federation, that war was going to break out at some point, she had no idea that what she was witnessing would eventually lock humanity into a pattern of perpetual solar war that would last more than two hundred years.

By 0077, however, that period of idle rampaging came to an end. For whatever reason, the populace of Side 6 decided they didn't like the Marines' spree of debauchery and violence. Rather forcefully decided. Which was to say, they staged a revolution to wrest control of the colony from the Federation. Twenty nine year old Jack and the Fifth Marine Company became embroiled in the subsequent civil war that tore apart Side 6--and then in came the Princely Pals to fuck up what coulda been a glorious war by blockading the Federation and deploying...big ass humanoid robots? The fuck? Jack clearly remembers that in the midst of the firefight, she just straight up stopped and stared. Even as the thing started stepping towards her. Her only thought was, Hold up, them Princely Pal motherfuckers got fuckin' big ass humanoid robots? Fuck this shit, sign me up! Then it shot at her and nearly killed her and Jack went back to the whole 'fighting for my life' thing she'd been doing about a second ago.

Thanks to the Princely Pals' intervention, the revolution ended just a couple of short months later, and the Federation evacuated what personnel were left, including Jack and the wartorn remnants of the Fifth Company, who reported the existence of the big ass humanoid robots they'd seen (Jack followed her report immediately with 'gimme one', but this, oddly enough, produced no results). More importantly, Jack's first taste of war left a most sweet taste in her mouth--a very addictive taste. Big ass humanoid robots or no big ass humanoid robots, Jack wanted to go back to Side 6 and keep fighting, but instead, she got a far greater treat: just a year later, in the first days of UC 0079, the Princely Pals of Zion declared war on the Earth Federation.

The week following was possibly the most brutal warfare ever conducted in the history of humanity. The reckless and inhumane use of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons led to the massacre of nearly three billion civilians just in that first week. The Fifth Company was among the first to be deployed in that week of horror, deployed in a massive, chaotic rush to Side 1, where all the Federation knew was that Zeon forces were attacking. They found out too late that what Zeon was doing was, in fact, gassing the goddamn colony. Nearly the entire Fifth Company, as well as a huge percentage of the colony's civilian population, was slaughtered in the initial attack, leaving Jack the sole survivor of Fifth Company and one of few Federation personnel who managed to get the fuck away from Side 1 and rendezvous with Federation forces. Any other soldier might have been stricken mentally insane by the incident--the sight of her squad mates suffocating violently, the sight of thousands of civilians dying an agonising death, the sound of people all around choking and screaming for help with their final breaths, the bodies massed in the streets in the aftermath...it was enough to put any soldier out of commission. Except Jack. Her mind already numbed to the horrors of war and violence, her mental state already deteriorated and decrepit, having gone to Side 1 with the nagging suspicion that shit was about to seriously hit the fan, Jack came back, weary and exhausted, but...entirely undisturbed by the atrocity she had just witnessed--at least, that was what her superiors noted, never realising the incident would haunt her much later and become the catalyst for a massive shift in her life. Meanwhile, the memory of the friends she'd had for ten years suffocating to death before her very eyes inflicted Jack with another effect that would cage her for years to come--the realisation that she too could be hurt by the deaths of others. She'd never thought it possible--never thought that she'd be affected by the pain and absence of others, because in all her life, she'd never grown as close to anyone as she had with the Fifth Company marines. Their deaths caused Jack to realise that she was vulnerable to that pain, and she reacted by emotionally detaching herself from all other people, by shutting herself in within herself. She got back, and immediately asked where she was headed to next.

Turns out next up was Side 5, known otherwise as Loum. Zeon forces had ventured there with the intent of dropping the colony on Earth (which Jack decided was a totally ingenious idea), but it quickly became a full scale battle as Federation forces moved to rout the Zeon fleet. Whilst up above in the orbit of Loum the two fleets duked it out, both forces deployed ground armies, and Jack, along with a reconstructed Fifth Company, descended to the surface of Loum, where they were met once more with...big ass humanoid robots. With the odds of their conventional forces winning against these newly-christened mobile suits quickly becoming dismal, the Federation settled instead with launching nuclear weapons at the Zeon forces, annihilating much of the colony along with it. Once again, Jack survived by the skin of her teeth, managing, just like in Side 1, to avoid the devastation that claimed many of her comrades, and she was evacuated from the completely destroyed colony along with countless civilian refugees.

Then Zeon invaded Earth.

Things were looking pretty shitty for the Federation. By May, Zeon controlled most of Europe, Asia, and North America, and their dominance in space could never have been questioned. Massive casualties had been sustained--on both sides, but civilians suffered the most, especially out in space, where Zeon was ruthless in its targetting of civilian centres. On Earth, Federation forces were scattered and their numbers were decimated. Things weren't looking good--at least, not for the Feddies, and considering that was the side Jack was on, that was all she gave a shit about.

Behind the scenes, however, the Federation was working on its ace in the hole--its own mobile suits. The failure of Federation leadership to take seriously the threat of mobile suits as a modern, effective combat system had led to their current predicament, and they were now rushing to catch up to Zeon's considerable advantage. Jack never knew much of the 'Gundam'--hell, hardly heard much about it until after the war, when she was told that some fucking fifteen year old brat had been the one to do so much damage against Zeon in that thing. But, that's a tale separate from her own (in other words, she doesn't give a shit about it). Where does Jack figure into it? Jack figures into it when the Federation started mass producing their own mobile suits in counterpart to the Zeon's Zaku II mass production types.

Jack had no reason to think she'd be selected as those few chosen to pilot these new and precious machines. Objectively speaking, there was no reason to think she would--but the Feddies either didn't care about her mental state or had yet to notice even years later; all they seemed to know was that, months back, Jack had been the only one in her Company to emerge alive from Side 6 and then from Side 1 to tell of Zeon's new and powerful weapon. And as far as they were concerned enough, that counted as 'experience' with the things. Not that she wasn't also a 'good' soldier--she just didn't think her skills with a gun and with her fists had been what had gotten her noticed. And hell, she didn't care. Soon's she got the notice saying 'hey, we're about to give you a big machine of death, that cool with you?', Jack's reaction pretty much boiled down to 'fuck yes'.

She went through the same training as everybody else, of course. The Feds kinda pushed 'em through it as fast as they could, seeing as they were eager to get their new weapon into play to even the field a bit. Even then, Jack caught on fairly quick...er, in her own way. Which was to say, she'd find her own way of working a certain function, and then to hell with the way she was instructed to do it, that was how she was gonna be doing it. This tendency was key to the development of her eventual fighting style as a mobile suit pilot...which will be detailed below. Nevertheless, she got through the training along with the rest of the initial 'batch' of trainee pilots, and by the later months of 0079 she was sorted into the First Mobile Suit Squad, given a brand spankin' new RGM-79 GM, and sent back to Earth to help reclaim the planet.

Her first experience as a pilot in combat was exhilarating. Operation Odessa--aimed to eliminate the Zeon mining facilities in Odessa that had been the foundation of their war effort on Earth. Nearly four million soldiers, as well as more tanks and aircraft than Jack had even thought the Feds had. And, of course, the mobile suits--only a small number, since the Federation still couldn't seem to figure out that these things were fucking vital to their success, but Jack was amongst them, and she still remembers with the utmost fondness her first sortie, her first instance of combat with another mobile suit. One of the new MS-09B Dom units, designed by Zeon specifically for combat on Earth.

Whatever fate it was that had been watching over her when she'd survived Side 1 and Side 5 must've been called back into action yet again, 'cause Jack came half an inch from death that day. The Dom had fired off one of its rockets, and it was aimed squarely for the cockpit of the GM where Jack sat cramped but just about high from the sheer joy of being in her...well, big machine of death. Reality came calling hard when she saw that rocket fired at nearly point blank range--Jack is fond of saying that, with lightning speed and precision, she was able to survive the explosive, but the truth is that her GM tripped, nearly sailed crashing to the ground, and as a result of the sudden movement the rocket that shoulda blown the shit outta the cockpit (and Jack) ended up blowing off the GM's left arm. Well, like hell if she was gonna let that be the doom of her--she'd survived nuclear strikes and the gassing that'd killed the rest of her Company, and fuck all if she was gonna die before she'd even gotten a chance to kill one of the enemy suits.

Deftly arming her remaining hand with a beam sabre, Jack lunged at the Dom--the enemy suit had, very quickly and very skilfully, shoved another rocket into its bazooka, but Jack's uncoordinated and entirely random charge took its pilot by surprise. And that was all Jack needed. She carved the Dom straight down the middle, the burning particle blade cleaving right through the cockpit, incinerating the Zeon pilot, and bisecting the Dom (almost) cleanly.

Back then, a single mobile suit kill meant a hell of a lot. And sure, Jack owed a lot of that first kill to luck, but who the hell knew that? All they'd seen was Jack charge a Dom straight in the face, dodge a blast that easily could have annihilated her suit, and then, with a single arm, slice the motherfucker in half. She had better things to do than correct them. Like go kill more Zekes.

And kill more Zekes she did. Operation Odessa wasn't over yet and neither was Jack's combat record. Soon as her GM was repaired (and believe me, she wanted to just keep at it, to hell with the thing's fucking arm) she was back in action. Took down two Zaku IIs in quick succession, both with her beam sabre, by the time the Federation declared Operation Odessa a success--they'd sustained massive losses, but they had driven off Zeon forces and inflicted, for the first time, considerable losses on the enemy--three of which Jack claimed for herself. But of course, three was not enough--how could it be? Jack wasn't satisfied. This wasn't the massive, relentless, gut-wrenching combat she'd been anticipating maniacally. This was boring. She and the other mobile suit pilots had practically been relegated to the duty of mopping up the remainder once conventional Federation forces had done their work. That wasn't acceptable. Jack wanted more. She wanted to experience what it really meant--the power she held as the controller of this weapon.

She would spend another month or so in Europe 'mopping up' before her wish was granted and Jack was sent to space to engage Zeon forces 'for real'. In the advent of Odessa, the Federation had realised that mobile suits really could be used to devastating effect, and began to mass produce GM units in earnest, sending them into space, where Jack felt the true war was to be found. She was right. Up in space, Jack became embroiled in the most vicious mobile suit warfare--and loved every second of it. She began to almost exclusively utilise the beam sabre, which became an integral part of her fighting style, and with it slaughtered enemy suit after enemy suit. The high of the power she now wielded was more than addictive-- a high that would not abate for years, a reality that would result ultimately in tragedy. But for now, Petty Officer Third Class Jack Jackson was carving her own little swathe into the Zeon forces--she wasn't about to become the Federation's Char Aznable or some shit (that title evidently belonged to the aforementioned fifteen year old brat), but Jack still valued her kill count, often, it seemed, more than she valued the lives of her team-mates--or hell, even her own life, as at several points she disregarded the safety of her team and herself to up her tally by one more.

December brought new developments for Jack that would certainly send her kill count shooting up into the sky--and those developments are generally now known as the Battles of Solomon, Granada, and A Baoa Qu--the penultimate battles of the One Year War, where the Federation threw all that it had at Zeon in desperation to finally end this conflict once and for all. Solomon was an incredibly one sided conflict--the Feddies had all the advantages, and the asteroid was overrun by Federal forces almost easily, much to Jack's dismay. The next target, however, was Granada, the second largest lunar city, located on the far side of the moon and thus much closer to the Principality than other Federation holdings. Granada had hosted Kycilia Zabi's Mobile Assault Force, and though that fleet had departed for A Baoa Qu by the time Federal forces attacked, it was still a hellish fight. The city was almost zealous in its devotion to the Zeon cause, and the remaining forces at Granada fought tooth and nail against the invading EFSF--it was fucking wonderful, the greatest battle Jack had fought until this point.

It was at A Baoa Qu that Jack participated in the final battle of the war--and in the years after that battle would become infamous, almost legendary, but the fact was that nearly the entire Federation mobile suit corps was deployed, and Jack didn't have much of an effect on the final outcome. Nevertheless, it was a wild battle--she loved it, and it added considerably to her kill count even though, embarrassingly enough, she finished off that battle incapacitated after her GM's head was blown off by a stray shot (in retrospect, she's lucky some Zeon bastard didn't see the headless GM and decide it was prime prey). Nevertheless, she in her rackety old GM was able to personally defeat and destroy fourteen Gelgoogs--the Zeon's brand new 'elite' mobile suit. Elite my ass --turns out all they did was look slightly more retarded than your run of the mill Zaku whilst Jack sliced the thing in half. By the time the One Year War was over, however, Jack's kill tally came in at seventy one mobile suits. A farcry from the counts of aces like Breniff Oguz, who alone destroyed one hundred and ninety three mobile suits and eight ships (shit, Jack didn't think that could even be possible), but hey--that was still seventy one big machines of death that had fallen to her beam sabre. And, in an unusually prophetic statement, Jack predicted that it wouldn't be long before she got the chance to up that count some more.

On January First of UC 0080, a very tenuous peace was declared. The Principality of Zeon surrendered. Disarmament began. Many weary soldiers, exhausted from the non-stop brutality and warfare, headed back home to return to the waiting arms of their wives, their husbands, their daughters and their sons. Not Jack. Jack remained in active duty, mopping up remnant Zeon forces who had decided to ignore the surrender and fight to their inevitable death and aiding in the disarmament of colonies and bases associated with Zeon. Boring stuff. Almost made her want to cry, but hell, Jack was pretty sure she didn't even have tear ducts, so she settled for a most unhappy sigh. What she wouldn't have given to be back in Granada and A Baoa Qu, amidst the glory of war....

It was Operation Stardust, an attack orchestrated and conducted by remnant forces of Zeon from the Delaz Fleet, that changed this. Jack herself, stationed far off in space, did not take part in the operation against the Delaz Fleet--but the attack caused the Federation to realise that there was the distinct possibility of Zeon remnants seeking to re-ignite the war--or, perhaps, new factions carrying the banner of Zeon. In UC 0083, the EFSF established a new force: the Titans. Designed as a counter-insurgency force operating apart from the authority of the Federation, the Titans attracted a vast array of candidates, including many old One Year War veterans. One of these was Jack, who was quick to sign up with the Titans upon the realisation that not only were they most likely going to be the first to be deployed against any new threats...they were beyond the Federation's jurisdiction. And that meant a lot of things to Jack, none of them of a savoury nature.

By UC 0084, she had become Jack Jackson, Master Chief Petty Officer in the Titans, and it wasn't hard to see that the Titans were...well, precisely the type of organisation that Jack was simply made for. Their propensity for wanton destruction, complete abuse of human rights, and constant acts of brutality against spacers was just what Jack needed to satisfy the violent urges that her role in the One Year War had aggravated. And to that end, she simply gave in. If she had ever tried to control her innate need for brutality and bloodshed, then her induction into the Titans simply put an end to it, and it was amongst the Titans that arguably what humanity Jack had left quickly began going down the drain. This atmosphere of wanton violence and consistent disregard for human rights wasn't conducive to the attempts Jack had once made to try and stop her gradual transformation into a cold-blooded killer, but in the Titans, she just stopped caring.

The Titans set about hunting down Zeon remnants using whatever tactics they deemed necessary. Jack came along for the ride. Did they destroy a whole lot of Zeon remnants? Not really. Did they violate a whole lot of human rights doing it? Oh hell yes they did. For some of them, it had always been that way--they were just fucked in the head. For others, the sudden power placed in their hands and the understanding that they couldn't actually be held responsible by the Feds for anything they did drove them to do the horrific things they did. Jack was simply a combination of the two--a mentally disturbed individual whose descent into a war criminal and a butcher was aggravated by the nature of the organisation she had ended up in. Not at all a misunderstood soul--not even Jack would try to convince anyone that she wasn't responsible for all the things she had done and would do. Nothing excused the atrocities she and her fellow Titans committed.

In March of 0085, the worst of these major atrocities occurred. A demonstration at Side 1 Colony 30, the very colony Jack had narrowly dodged death by gassing at six years previously, raged out of control, and when Federation forces failed to contain the riot, the Titans were called in. In a strangely poignant reversal of events, one that showcased what Jack had become, Master Chief Jackson along with several other Titans was ordered to venture to Colony 30 and intervene. And upon arrival, per their orders, they shut off the colony's air supply and pumped G3 nerve gas into the colony. All ten million inhabitants of the colony were murdered.

Jack had never thought she would react so intensely to murder on such a scale. It was almost as though she hadn't actually known what she was doing as she was approaching Colony 30 in her own new custom Hizack unit, hadn't known what she was doing as she helped to shut off the air supply, hadn't known what she was doing as she secured the canisters of G3 that would soon be pumping poison into the air of the colony. The fact was, she had known exactly what she was doing--she simply didn't know where to stop. And at first, Jack did not think much of it--she and the other Titans were joking and chuckling as they left the canisters there and then departed Colony 30. It wasn't until the squad of Hizacks was launching up into space that Jack looked down, thinking she'd see a glorious scene of death and decay--and that was exactly what she saw. People strangling to death in the streets, suffocating violently, the sight of millions of civilians dying an agonising death, the sound of people all around choking and screaming for help with their final breaths, the bodies massed in the streets...it was that day in Side 1, six years ago, all over again.

January Fifth, 0079 felt like it was a universe away, a century ago, a horrible thing that had happened to someone that Jack no longer was. And it took the horrific act she had just committed to make her realise she was still that same person and that if she stayed here in the Titans, she would degenerate into something inhuman and bestial. Perhaps she wouldn't have realised the true horror of what she'd done if she hadn't experienced the very same thing herself--if she hadn't known what it meant to watch people who had meant something to you die screaming for anyone to help them, if she hadn't known what it meant to realise you were helpless to do anything, perhaps she would never have felt the overwhelming anguish and remorse she felt the moment she looked down and realised what she was seeing was January 5, 0079.

She just about broke down in her mobile suit at that very moment. To say her comrades were shocked was an understatement--Master Chief Jack Jackson, who had committed grievous 'crimes against humanity' without batting an eyelash, who had talked of the most vile and horrifying things and then laughed openly about them, who had appeared of them all least likely to even think twice about the gassing of a colony, was now freaking the fuck out over what she'd just done.

She barely made it back to the Titans headquarters at Gryps, but when she did, she immediately returned to her quarters, and tried to stop thinking about it. She couldn't. She couldn't leave Colony 30--she felt like she was still there six years ago watching the squadmates she'd spent ten years revelling and debauching with die a slow and painful death. Except this time, she was the one gassing them, and she was the one looking them in the eye as they howled her name in despair--the name of their murderer. And there was ten million of them, dying again and again all around Jack, again and again.

That was the moment she knew she wanted out of Titans. She knew it even before the Titans awarded merits unto those who had conducted the gassing, knew it even before the Federation simply didn't charge the culprits for a damn thing, knew it even before, soon after, the formation of a rebel group called the Anti-Earth Union Group was discovered by Titans intelligence. The gassing of Colony 30, which passed in infamy as the 30 Bunch Incident, was the final straw that broke the camel's back, and the people of the colonies would have no more of it.

Jack knew the chances of being accepted by the AEUG were all but nil--they'd know her for the war criminal she was, they'd put her on trial, and they'd execute her. Her remorse and fear was such that she did not care. She began fomenting her plans of defection immediately, but it wouldn't be for some time before she would find her chance to escape to the AEUG. This chance came about in March of 0087, when Titans intel indicated the presence of an AEUG fleet skulking about near the cruiser Jack and a squad of Titans had boarded, destined for the base at Green Noa 1. As soon as she got wind of it, Jack was convinced she would have no better chance than this--and, in yet another impulsive act, a decision made at the drop of a dime, Jack boarded her Hizack, and discreetly left the cruiser. By the time the Titans realised she'd taken off, she was beyond the cruiser's cannon range, and the Titans rushed to determine what the hell was happening. Master Chief Jackson had been one of their most loyal--one of their most devoted. Such was her reputation as one of the Titans' cruellest and most vicious (at least, amongst the Titans' own and not beyond) that they couldn't believe she could possibly be defecting until it was too late. She approached the AEUG fleet flying a flag of surrender, and was met with extreme suspicion--not surprising. The Gryps Conflict had only just fired off, and a defection by the Titans, renowned for their utter devotion and wicked natures, was unheard of. She was immediately arrested, transported to the nearest AEUG base of operations, and questioned--why was she defecting? Who had been her commanding officer? What did she know? Each question she answered shortly but honestly. She was defecting because she feared what she was becoming as a Titan. Her commanding officer had been Yazan Gable. And she didn't know much, but what she did know, she would tell, as long as she was the hell away from the Titans.

They just about took apart her Hizack, reverse engineering it, figuring out the secrets and weak points of the Titans' main mobile suit, before being provided with an old GM unit--a defector was not worth one of the AEUG's newer, better suits, they figured. Shows what they knew--Jack almost smiled when she saw the GM, like she was seeing an old friend for the first time in years. And when she got into the machine, it was as though she was still just an up and coming Federation pilot about to be sent into battle against Zeon--it was all almost comfortingly familiar, even ten years on. Made her wonder if maybe things hadn't changed that much--if maybe she still had a chance.

Which, y'know, you generally don't think about becoming a better person when you get into a big machine of death, but hey, little steps, right?

Jack was solely on provisional status at that point, but sought to prove herself to the AEUG--well aware that, in the event that they either threw her out or put her on trial, the Titans would find and punish her severely for her defection, and she had no desire to have that happen. And either way, Jack herself had no loyalty to the cause of either the AEUG nor the Titans--she chose to defect to the AEUG rather than simply flee because, after twenty two years, the military life was the only life she really knew, and even Jack understood that any attempt to assimilate into 'normal' society would...well, it would be a failure at this point. It no longer mattered to her for whom she was fighting for, as long as she was fighting for a faction that didn't threaten her self-control and tempt her to do things that she would...regret. In other words, she was a soldier, not a murderer. She wanted it to be that way.

It took her participation in a number of small-time skirmishes against the Titans to demonstrate a semblance of 'loyalty' to the AEUG before Jack was trusted to participate in larger operations. It seemed to her other defectors like Emma Sheen were trusted much more quickly--given a full on Rick Dias, and then the goddamn Gundam Mk II, which as far as Jack could tell was supposed to be the AEUG equivalent of the Titans' Psyco Gundam--in other words, not the kind of thing you handed to someone you didn't trust. But fuck it, Jack didn't want some goddamn Gundam. s'long as she was behind the controls of a good 'ol GM, doing what she did best, she could care less how other defectors were treated.

In May, the AEUG was priming for an attack on Jaburo, the vital subterranean Federation base in South America, and Jack was called in to participate in the operation. The AEUG threw Neros and Rick Diases and even a Gundam at Jaburo...and Jack, in her ancient little GM. Upon arrival, however, it became evident that something was very wrong---at least to Jack. The Titans forces were comprised of outdated mobile suits, even fighters, which were largely obsolete by this point. And the reason for this abnormality became apparent as the AEUG forces penetrated into the cave system beneath the base, where they found....nothing. No Titans, no further resistance, nothing except a ticking nuclear bomb. The Titans had left the base, hoping to annihilate the considerable AEUG force massed in Jaburo by destroying the base itself. Maybe you shoulda taken all your shit out with you, Jack mused, before some AEUG soldier pointed out, hey, look, Garuda-class MS cargo planes, we can totally just grab one of those and high tail it the fuck outta here.

Ultimately, all the bomb did was destroy the Federation's primary base and kill all the Titans who had been left behind. But hey, A for effort, Titans.

Soon after Jaburo the Garuda-class was attacked in space, and then again by the Titans cruiser Sudori. Both times, Jack aided in the defence of the Garuda, even at one point throwing herself directly into danger in order to save a capsule filled with civilians. Well, at least that was how the AEUG saw it from the Garuda. As for Jack--hell, she'd never even seen the capsule; all she'd seen was two Hizacks looking awfully distracted by something, and then decided meh, might as well. She didn't even hear of her inadvertent heroism until after the battle, when some AEUG big shot came up and was ranting about how maybe Jack truly had chosen to redeem herself. Her reaction was a clear cut 'the fuck are you talking about' expression before the captain described exactly what he thought he'd seen. Jack immediately rushed to correct him, assuring him she was honoured to have been praised so highly, but that he had the order of events wrong, and it would have been most despicable of her to lie and obscure the truth...

Ha...like hell. Jack just rolled with it, hid her initial surprise and quickly adopted an 'it was nothing, just doing what I knew was the right thing to do' attitude. Heh, suckers. Man, if she just kept making these mistakes, she'd be set with this shit...then again--why did they need to be mistakes? Clearly, saving the lives of others, something Jack had once thought had no point and would only endanger herself needlessly, would ensure the trust and appreciation of the AEUG--and as a former Titan, Jack kinda needed that. In other words, in order to secure trust and, possibly, higher standing, Jack was to pretend she really had become some sort of bleeding heart humanitarian do-gooder whatever. The AEUG were idealistic suckers, they'd eat that shit up.

She never expected the deception to become anything more than that. She wasn't supposed to give a damn in reality. But when the AEUG got wind that the Titans were intending to gas another colony, something seemed to click for Jack. She didn't spontaneously become a good, heroic person--I'm sure as hell not saying that, because she still isn't that. But there was something about the idea of another colony being gassed that simply awoke revulsion and vehemence of a sort she never thought she'd be feeling. The AEUG, massing their forces in preparation for Operation Apollo, felt they could not at this point break away a squad to venture all the way out to Side 2 to intercept the Titans, but Jack, up front and personally, volunteered to lead a team of reserves, armed with older, outdated mobile suits, to stop the Titans. For once, her intent seemed entirely honest--even to those most sceptical of the suspicious ex-Titan. She was granted permission by AEUG leadership, and therefore led the little team out to Side 2 Colony 25, where the motley crew of GMs and Neros encountered a team of Hizacks armed with canisters of G3 nerve gas.

She missed out on participating in Operation Apollo--in fact, it was the first time Jack had ever knowingly skipped out on the possibility of a major military operation in favour of doing something...well...'good'. She had no idea that whether or not she and her team had been there to destroy the Titans who had been tasked with poisoning the colony, they would have failed anyway, because the canisters and the nerve gas within were defective--but she didn't know that and didn't need to know that. She believed that she had just saved hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of lives, and...well, it was almost as good a feeling as when she was in the midst of the glory of war, grinding her beam sabre down into the flesh (er, armour) of her foe, cleaving the metal construct into pieces. Almost as good as that. Coming from someone who had once felt that war and violence was the most addictive sensation, the most pleasing and the most wonderful high one could ever experience, it was a lot more significant than Jack, in retrospect, had ever realised. Marked the beginning of a change that Jack herself never actually noticed. To her, it was still just something selfish --convinced herself that she'd done it as simply a part of her deception, to curry favour with the idealistic bastards up top in the AEUG. For once, the deception was on her.

But there was still a war on, and things were changing rapidly for that war. The arrival of Axis Zeon, a union of former Zeon forces led ostensibly by the eight year old runt of one of the long-dead Zabi clan, changed everything. The Titans and the AEUG were both clamouring for an alliance; many old One Year War vets were adamantly opposed to working with their old enemies, but shit, Jack didn't give a fuck. So long as it levelled the playing field she couldn't care less if they allied themselves with that bastard who'd shot her GM's arm off in Odessa (oh wait, that fucker's dead). Ultimately, however, Axis Zeon allied with the Titans, and to balance the playing field in the aftermath, the AEUG staged a battle with the Titans over the city of Dakar, while their Earth counterparts, a resistance group called Karaba, seized control of the Federal Assembly in Dakar. There, AEUG leader Quattro Bajeena (whose name never failed to elicit a mean-spirited chuckle out of Jack) gave a speech, televised for the world to see, in which he denounced the Titans for fighting so near to civilians and civilian centres. Oh, also, he revealed he was actually Char Aznable...Aznable, like the Zeon ace from back in the One Year War? The guy who killed, what, something like two hundred mobile suits and a dozen odd ships? That guy was the leader of the AEUG?

Well shit, that just meant Jack got to be vehement at 'Quattro' for getting more kills than she had back in the War.

By the end of 0087, with the Titans having lost the support of the Federation and the populace of Earth due to Quattro Bajeena/Char Aznable's speech (was that really all it took after all this time?), the frequency of their attacks on colonies and civilian centres increased--apparently, they even had some big ass laser called the colony laser that killed...well, colonies. Jack recommended the creation of a task force dedicated specifically to combatting Titan operations such as colony gassing and dropping--a team that would break apart from the main AEUG force to intercept Titans forces tasked with targetting civilians and colonies. She still didn't think she was doing it for any genuine reason--still figured she was just deceiving the AEUG, acting like she was seeking redemption or some idealistic shit like that. The venture was approved, and the Anti Colony Operations Squad was formed, or ACOS, thus fulfilling Jack's lifelong dream of leading a team with a cool acronym. ACOS foiled several attempts by the Titans to use their standard intimidation and terror techniques, and though in the end they did not significantly alter the course of the war, their actions saved millions of lives far from the front itself--and ultimately, that was all Jack had sought, even though she herself never seemed to realise it.

In the interval, the Axis had betrayed the Titans and allied themselves with the AEUG, destroying in one fell swoop A Baoa Qu, the Titans' main space headquarters, stealing the colony laser, and assassinating Bask Om and Jamitov Hymem (whose name can be made completely hilarious if you change a single letter...yes, Jack was quick to notice this) before promptly betraying the AEUG as well and setting the Axis asteroid on a collision course for Granada. Jack was not present at Operation Maelstrom, in which the AEUG managed narrowly to alter the course of the asteroid before it hit the lunar city. Two weeks later, however, some new Titans officer Jack had never heard of, some Pap Smear Scirroco or something like that, were brought back under full control, and Pap Smear directed his remaining forces to attack Axis Zeon--a foolhardy move, but the AEUG was quick to join the fray as well, because clearly it wasn't enough of a clusterfuck already. Jack was deployed for this particular operation, one of the fiercest and most enjoyable battles she'd ever taken part in--zooming about in her old GM amidst vastly superior Rick Diases and Marasai units, Jack nevertheless was able to do some damage of her own before the AEUG managed to capture the game changer--the colony laser. Previously used to destroy colonies that did not bend to the will of the Titans, it was now going to be used to put this war to an end for good. The laser was pointed towards the bulk of Titans forces, amongst them their commander Pap Smear Scirroco, who was evidently locked into battle with some one of the AEUG's 'aces' (dammit, where did Jack sign up to get to be called an ace?)--a battle he lost just before the laser was fired and the Titans were simply obliterated. Everything in the laser's path was annihilated. Victory belonged to the AEUG.

But of course, peace is overrated, and this world shall have none of it. Unbeknownst to the Titans and the AEUG, locked in their relentless battle of attrition, the Axis forces had quietly stolen away from the battle, headed for earth. Just weeks after the conclusion of the Gryps Conflict, the Axis christened itself Neo Zeon, and launched an invasion of Earth. Anti-Earth Union Group pilots and soldiers, weary of the conflict they had just stepped out of, were thrown right back into the thick of combat. Jack, for her part, rejoiced. A new war so soon after the last? What more could you ask for?

For two years, the First Neo Zeon War was waged, claiming nearly as many lives as the One Year War had ten years ago. By this time, Jack, freshly turned forty years old, was considered entirely 'redeemed' by the AEUG for her actions with the Anti-Colony Operations Squad, and was ranked as a lieutenant; as now an officer of the AEUG she also was finally permitted to set aside that crappy old GM, which by now was so battered and beaten you coulda passed it off for her old One Year War unit, in favour of her own custom Rick Dias II. For the majority of the war, Jack, much to what would have been even her own surprise if she had taken particular notice of it, sat out the majority of the war in favour of continuing ACOS operations, patrolling colonies near war zones, intercepting enemy personnel approaching civilian centres, and halting operations targetting colonies and population centres. She still saw combat, of course--she couldn't possibly have continued at it for two years without any sort of combat, because that was still what she essentially lived for. The only difference, however, was that Jack realised she'd been lying to herself. In order to accommodate her actions with the pessimistic and cynical system by which she had lived nearly her entire life, Jack had convinced herself that she had formed the ACOS, had stopped several attempted colony gassings and drops, had become what she was now, solely to fool with AEUG, to gain their trust, to move up in their ranks. By the time of the First Neo Zeon War, however, she could no longer fool herself. Somehow, she was almost ashamed to admit it, almost refused outright to say it--that helping and saving the lives of others made her feel almost as good, if not just as good as taking lives and fighting wars made her feel. To admit that would have forced her to change the very philosophy she had based her entire life on--that people were malicious and selfish at their base, that people deserved all her hate and none of her pity--that the world was a fucked up, destitute shithole, devoid of hope, of meaning, of life. She had lived by that philosophy for decades. She'd seen people slaughtered by the millions, succumbing to the torturous death of nerve gas, squashed like insects by mobile suits, annihilated by massive weapons of war, and now she was supposed to realise that the whole world wasn't really like that?

Her method of dealing with it was quite simple: avoidance. She just didn't think about it. Instead, she continued to lie to herself. ACOS existed solely so that people would appreciate and look up to her as some kind of good person, some kind of hero--she was doing it for herself, not for the lives saved as a result of her actions. If she convinced herself that was the truth, her worldview wouldn't need to change, and she could continue to validate all the horrible things she'd seen in her forty years by saying that was just how humanity and the world worked.

And thus it was that Jack saw the First Neo Zeon War to its end. 0090 saw the dissolution of the AEUG, many of whom, including Jack, were folded into the newly formed Londo Bell organisation--an elite special forces unit of sorts, directly under the authority of the Federation so as to avoid the same power abuse that had occurred with the Titans. Following this, Lieutenant Jackson campaigned fiercely to have ACOS folded into Londo Bell as well, as a unit specifically designed to respond to threats targetting colonies and population centres, a wish that was eventually granted by Londo Bell leadership.

She grew quite attached to her ACOS squad despite her attempts to keep herself emotionally distant from her team-mates for fear of repeating the trauma she had endured watching her comrades gassed to death in the first week of the One Year War. She reminded herself that to let herself see her ACOS squadmates as anything like friends was to welcome the same fate that she had suffered in Side 1 helplessly witnessing the deaths of her first and last true friends. Ultimately, however, her conscious protests were undermined by the unconscious loneliness she had felt all these years--exacerbated by her self-imposed isolation, her shifting mental afflictions, and her need to fight and kill as the only way to satisfy her chaotic and violent mental state. Whether or not she consciously wanted it, Jack began to consider the ACOS squad as more than just team mates. She showed to them something more than the callous, angry, violent officer she was to everybody else, unconsciously showed them that there were vastly more facts of her personality than mental deficiency and anger management issues.

She even told her second in command, Master Chief Miranda Rodriguez, the closest thing she had to a best friend, her real name.

In the end, however, Jack's instincts proved correct once again--and this time, it didn't serve to save her life. In 0092, after a brief period of relative peace and calm, war returned once more to the solar system. This time, the culprit was Char Aznable--the man who had once led the AEUG, now returned after disappearing at the end of the First Neo Zeon War, now in command of a second faction calling itself Neo Zeon. Zeon just never stays the fuck dead, Jack mused when the reports came in. This time, however, Neo Zeon's objectives were slightly different. Instead of invading Earth, they were now intending to bomb the ever-loving shit out of the planet. Why, Jack did not for the life of her know. What she did know was that Aznable was intending to drop asteroids on Earth--had, in fact, succeeded in dropping Luna 5 on the Londo Bell headquarters in Lhasa, Tibet, though not before most Londo Bell personnel and equipment were evacuated. However, this single bombing was not enough. Aznable's next target was to be the city of London itself--by dropping a second lunar asteroid on the city, he hoped to force thousands to evacuate into space. Londo Bell intel received just enough information to know when it was happening, what they were doing, and what the target was--and ACOS squad was mobilised to stop the asteroid drop.

Their estimated opposition numbers, however, were wildly off. Intel had led Londo Bell to believe that ACOS would encounter perhaps company strength--certainly not the array of mobile suits that ACOS squad found itself in the midst of when they approached the asteroid and were immediately set upon. Jack failed to order a retreat, and by the time the thought even occurred to her, it was too late, as they were veritably swarmed. The situation went from diffusing the rocket thrusters set on Luna 2 to surviving the onslaught they had never been prepared for.

Master Chief Rodriguez was the first to go down--Jack saw her mobile suit blasted to pieces by Neo Zeon missiles, and her cry of rage and loss was lost as Minovsky jammers shut off communications between the Londo Bell operatives. And though she fought as hard as she'd ever fought in her life to prevent further casualties, her team mates fell one by one like dominoes until all that was left of ACOS squad was Lieutenant Jack Jackson, alone, out numbered, out gunned, and as good as dead.

She woke up in Londo Bell possession once again, her head pounding, her entire body aching, and with her recollection of what had occurred beyond hazy. On some level, however, even if she couldn't remember anything beyond when ACOS had taken off for the mission, she knew what had to have happened. Moments later, Londo Bell officers arrived to confirm her fears: ACOS squad was gone. Jack had been found in the demolished remains of her Rick Dias, blacked out, drifting in space and about to run out of power. Neo Zeon was long gone, and Luna 2 had struck London, displacing tens of thousands.

While it was understood that ACOS had been sent in underinformed and unprepared, it was also agreed that Jack's negligence as a CO and failure to issue a general retreat to her squad was responsible for their deaths. The realisation that she was responsible for the deaths of her friends and team mates far outweighed any other punishment she could have been given--she hardly heard it at all when they told her she would be spared court-martial because of the failure of Londo Bell intel, hardly heard it when they demoted her to Master Chief Petty Officer, hardly heard and hardly gave a damn when she was informed she was to be transferred to the Seventeenth Mobile Suit Reserve Unit. What the hell did it matter? She ended up sinking back into old ways of thinking--became violent, returned to alcohol and cigarette abuse, and just about gave up on the hints of optimistic and hopeful thinking she had begun to drift towards in the days preceding the annihilation of ACOS squad. She became much like she had been during the One Year War--seeking to avoid pain and misery by losing herself in war and combat.

By the time she's been transferred to the 17th Mobile Suit Reserve Unit, the Second Neo Zeon War has come to an end: Char Aznable is believed to be dead, the remnants of Zeon are scattered, and Jack has been slated into the 17th, a motley little militia, a farcry from Londo Bell. At any other time she would've been pissed--to think she, a veteran of twenty eight years, has been demoted to being under the command of some runt half her goddamn age. But this isn't any other time--this is here and now and she just can't bring herself to care. All that matters to her was that she can lose herself in the furore of war.