Brandon "Joke" Michaels

For the first several months of her life with the Midnight Raiders, Katrylle actually thought Joke's name was JokeDamnIt. It seemed that when ever anyone called his name, they would string those words together as if they were all one. It wasn't until some someone had actually gotten mad at him and called him "JokeYouShitHead" that she understood.

Life with the Raiders
Brandon Michaels had never been serious in his entire life. He had actually earned the nickname "Joke" as a young child and it stayed with him throughout his life. The Raiders knew they could rely on him when the chips were down, but the price was dealing with the extremes to which he would take a joke

Regardless, Joke was one of the best damn demo men around, a fact that surely scared more than one of the Raiders on more than one occasion. Jack nearly killed him the day he found Joke with Kat, heads bent together over one of his many experiments in pyrotechnics. He had been trying to teach her how to properly seat a detonator. The girl was only eleven at the time.

It had been Joke who, once the others had realized that Jack was falling in love with Kat (it took the man a couple more months to admit to it himself), climbed up to the outside of Jack's Panther, crossed out the 'C' in 'War Cat' and replaced it with a 'K'. The fact that he was drunk and had done it with a can of house paint and a partially dried paint brush made it looked like a five year old had been the culprit. Much to Joke's dismay, Jack never complained and he never changed it back.

His greatest joke, however, had been the day he had convinced Dalia Entem into helping him lure the Rancor he eventually took to calling "Fred" into the lower floors of the Ranch. For the most part, the place was derilec and unused, but that didn't stop Jack from throwing a royal fit. Unfortunately, getting a Rancor into someplace was much easier than getting him out. Fred was there to stay.

It was thought that Joke had perrished with the Raiders during Darrak's last ambush.

Present Day
During the ambush, Joke's mech had been hit rather hard, throwing the pilot's pod to the ground with such force that Joke had been knocked unconsious. Although the pod looked demolished, it had mostly been cosmetic. It helped that part of the warehouse had fallen on the pod, obscuring the majority of it.

Months later, he woke up from the coma he had been in, effectively suffering from amnesia. Little by little, as his body recovered, so did his mind. Thinking that the Raiders were dead and gone, Joke departed the Med Planet he had been transferred to and headed home. There, he discovered that an old flame he had had many years before had given him a son he had known nothing about. Joke settled into being a father, though he never did marry the boy's mother.

Joke is currently on board the Krita with the remainder of the Midnight Raiders. Although he has mellowed slightly in his old age, he still loves a good joke most days. He is still Travers' demolition expert and he trains new recruits in the ancient form of hand to hand combat called "Mantae".