The years leading up to the civil war had very little effect on a certain Luke Campbell. Given his prior experience with dodging all kinds of people looking for him, he managed to elude any attempts by the government to stick him anywhere he didn’t want them to. His biggest issue was the fact that due to some bizarre circumstances, he ended up having his ability swapped out for another. Gone was his microwave ability, and in its place, super strength that was triggered by making him angry. (Don’t call him the Hulk, it pisses him off and you do NOT want to do that.)
As a result, it took him a while to get used to it. Having it trigger every time he got frustrated led to a lot of things breaking he didn’t want, like electronic devices, cars, doors, glasses, tables, chairs, bars…. And occasionally, people. It was incredibly easy to accidentally break things he immediately regretted afterwards, so a lot of time was spent trying to keep that from happening. Having a bad day was no excuse to crush the hand of someone who just wanted to shake his hand, especially when you’re trying to make a good first impression.
When the war broke out, the ensuing chaos made it even easier to drop off the radar, since now people had something bigger to worry about, which suited Luke just fine. Not choosing to have much to do with the war one way or the other, his primary focus was making sure he came out of it intact and preferably in better shape than when it started. His particular assistance to the ‘war effort’ usually involved breaking into places and wrecking shit, taking whatever he felt like.
To his credit (if it can even be called that), it was mostly the anti-evolved camps that were targeted. Supply lines became his priority once it became harder to get a good meal. Early on, after ditching the city, he discovered the bunker some rich conspiracy theorist had built a couple miles away, and decided to take it for himself, sans occupant. He stored up enough nonperishable food there to last through the war, though cooking was a bit of a challenge since he lost his ability to microwave things on his own. Canned food and MREs got old super fast, but one had to make do. Often he’d even ambush deliveries, making off with an entire truckload at a time. Food was his main priority, but ammunition and weapons usually got snagged as well, everything else was left abandoned unless it was clothes that weren’t blatantly military issue.
When problems found him, well, he made sure that said problems were taken care of with extreme prejudice. There weren’t many times he was able to break into military compounds unnoticed since subtlety isn’t really his thing, so when they started sending armed patrols after him, he found himself at a disadvantage: he couldn’t punch bullets. Therefore, he learned how to ambush armed fighters, and got his hands on their weapons, teaching himself how to use them, which made it even easier. At one point, he even decided it was fun to lure them out on purpose, especially if he knew they were anti-evolved, rather than just fighting because they were told to; the fanatics were a riot when you ripped their arms off.
Having already been involved with the less savory types, given he was already a familiar face around fighting rings before the war, he was in a good position to be approached by the d’Sarthe group. Being someone who loved to impress others with how awesome he is, it was child’s play in 2013 for one Ace Callahan to bring him on board, especially since Luke wasn’t exactly subtle with his own desire for some ‘connections’.
Eager to impress his new employers, Luke went about proving himself, including demonstrating being able to keep his mouth shut when needed. Gainfully employed by the dSarthe group, he had a pretty decent setup. Officially, he worked ‘security’ for some establishments, earning a reputation as someone you shouldn't piss off. On the less legal side of things, Luke was a good person to be sent out to break a few arms to get a message across, and in some cases when people needed to be removed permanently, a few skulls could be bashed in easily enough. He was also a good person to have in the background for certain business deals in case things went south, though he wasn't usually involved in the deals themselves. One of his favorite hangouts was the Crucible once it opened, though for some reason people tended not to want to fight him more than once, even though he did follow the rules and no one ended up ripped to pieces.