Bash scripting: how to remove or sort lines in curl feed

[layr]

If i fetch data using curl and cut only few characters from it, say cut -c1-2, it cuts those characters from all the lines within the fetched data.
So if data received was:
JJJJ 99304
1234950

then end result after applying cut would be:
JJ
12

How could only JJ be cut from the feed?

EDIT:
answer is the sed command. To cut only, for instance 2nd line, this should be used:

 | sed -n 2p