And some background and a new file with contacts and the background filled into the character info.
Joss Steele was born in a small metahuman community in the Kentucky backwoods; it was a place built up around a bunker mentality from back in the Nights of Rage when metahuman families had come together there for mutual protection. The community ran in almost complete economic isolation - they hunted and grew their own food, built using the materials directly available to them, and so on. Of course, this left them very short on replacement parts for their equipment; as she grew up Joss showed an aptitude for mechanics, quickly learning ways to make do with whatever she had available.
The second Crash killed a lot of their existing drones and vehicles, at least at first - unaware that this was part of events in the larger world, the community thought they were under attack, and went into a mad panic to be ready to defend themselves. Anyone of able-body in the community was drafted into its defense; Joss’s father taught her how to work her granddaddy’s old battle rifle so she’d be able to stay at least a little bit away from the fighting and held on to a shotgun for himself. The town stayed on high alert for days before anything happened - while there was no organized attack, the mass infrastructure collapse led some groups to raiding for supplies or profit. She worked the rifle pretty well, but it didn’t hurt that she’d managed to get a couple of drones running with little more than some salvaged wiring and chewing gum, and was somehow able to “hear” and direct them; she didn’t ask too many questions at the time.
The fighting had it’s cost, though - her father didn’t make it through. As if that wasn’t enough, about a month later the rumors started. Some of the other folk had noticed that she’d been able to keep some drones running even though she hadn’t been able to get any hardware running to control them from. People were saying she was a freak, that it was her fault everything crashed, that she was just going bring trouble down on them. She had a feeling she knew where that was going, so she got a vehicle running, packed a bag, and left in the dead of night.
She managed to make it near to a larger town before the vehicle gave out, and hoofed it the rest of the way. Once she was there, she learned that what was going on wasn’t so isolated, but wisely kept things to herself regarding her odd new abilities; she scraped by as a mechanic for a little while, starting to move from place to place once the events of the Emergence became known and she understood more about what had changed. Eventually, she came to the conclusion that it would be better to work in the shadows than to try to get hired on in some new repair shop every place she went (thus having to prove her abilities all over again each time), as if nothing else being well armed would keep her safer from techno-lynchings. So far, it’s worked out.
