evil stepmother jack vessalius (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
psychopath) wrote2012-09-06 11:03 pm
psychopath) wrote2012-09-06 11:03 pm
Entry tags:
[application]
Player Information
Name: Numi
Age: 22
AIM SN: N/A
email: surfacage@gmail.com
Have you played in an LJ based game before? Yes
Currently Played Characters: None
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Pandora Hearts
Canon Format: Manga
Character's Name: Jack Vessalius
Character's Age: 24
Conditional: If your character is 13 years of age or under, please clarify how they will be played.
What form will your character's NV take? An iPhone.
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities: By himself, Jack is a very competent swordsman. He can also shoot a gun, a skill he picked up from his previous stay in the Port.
Conditional: If your character has no superhuman canon abilities, what dormant ability will you give them? Jack previously had the ability to stop time for up to twenty seconds, with a fair bit of effort. I'd like for him to have that ability again.
Weapons: Jack has a Contract with the Chain named the Bloody Black Rabbit. Chains are eldritch abominations that hold great power, called by a human from the nexus of the universe's creation, a shapeless place called the Abyss. They make a contract with a human contractor - power in exchange for blood, or the contractor's life force.
B. Rabbit gives Jack the ability to wield a scythe - blood-red, spiderwebbed glass, razor-sharp, taller than him - with preternatural ease, along with the ability to call upon chains that pierce through and disembowel enemies. The Chain itself is a killing machine that is feared even among its kind.
His Chain also has the ability to break a world's 'chains', causing it to fall back into the place of its creation, the Abyss. (This ability will be disabled in the Port.)
Summoning B. Rabbit fully, however, would exhaust Jack considerably, until he builds up his endurance.
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History:
Once, there was a boy.
A waif with bright green eyes and even brighter golden hair, the bastard child of a noble and his mistress. His mother, driven mad by her lover's indifference after giving birth to Jack, passed away, and Jack was left to wander the streets.
He had nothing to his name, save for a few meager possessions, and an all-encompassing hatred for the world - for its inhabitants, for its cruelties, and for himself.
It was a snowy morning when everything changed, for him. There was a girl, nearly the same age as him, with hair as black as ebony, skin as white as snow, and eyes as red and as mischievous as rubies sparkling in the sun. Lacie was her name, and making Jack as uncomfortable as possible was her game. She stole food for him, burrowed into his filthy blanket, cut his hair, and generally made him feel like a human being again.
(Especially when she cut his ear. That was kind of weird, though he deserved it. The pain cut through the cold.)
Now, Lacie was a Misfortunate Child - as Jack understood, she had the pesky ability to attract people who wanted to do terrible things to her - as proved by getting picked up by two of these said people, looking to sell her for a pretty penny.
Things escalated pretty quickly from there. Lacie, seeing that her new 'friend' had been hurt, killed the antagonists of this little chapter of their fairytale, making it rain with their blood, and singing as she reveled in death. She was a Baskerville, part of a family rumoured to be death gods; they were looking for their lost princess.
Before they parted, Lacie gave Jack one of her earrings, and here we would expect the tale to end.
Unfortunately, we're talking about Jack. The event made Lacie Jack's raison d'être, and the desire to see her one more time gave him the strength to claw his way up from the streets to claiming his heir to nobility. He succeeded. It took him a decade.
He saw Lacie again, disguising himself as a performer, and when she became close and curious enough, he embraced her for the first time in his life. This ended with a glass of wine upended over her older brother, Oswald, a hilarious evening for her master, Glen, and a tearful reunion with his princess.
Happily ever after? No, not by any stretch of imagination. Jack had no way of knowing that Lacie was fated to be killed by her own brother (who loved and loved and loved her above everything), had no way of knowing that Oswald would take the name of his master and drink blood that wasn't his own. He had no way of knowing he wouldn't be able to stop it, either.
He spent two years of bliss, Jack the knight, with Lacie his fair lady, with Oswald his best friend.
And then she was gone, pulled by great black chains into the womb of creation and destruction, the Abyss. Oswald was gone, as he had taken his master's mantle, Glen, the death god that led the death gods, the Baskervilles.
Jack fell into depression.
Levi, the former Glen, came to him one night, as he lay awake in bed and wondered why he existed. Lacie's master had convinced her to have a child with him, because oh, Levi wanted an experiment. Jack came to find out that the child came from the Abyss, where his beloved was thrown into, and her name was Alice. Oswald was treating her like a human reincarnation of his guilt, a small slip of a girl that was an everyday reminder of the blood on his hands, while Jack-
Hope is a very dangerous thing, and that's what Jack had. A tiny sliver of hope. With all the power vested into her brother, wouldn't Oswald help Jack bring her back? Won't the two of them bring Lacie back together?
Hope is a very dangerous thing when crushed. Oswald - Glen - refused, saying it was impossible, but he knew, he just knew it was. Jack slipped on the mask he hadn't put on in years and set himself to scheme. He had nobody left. Two months after Lacie died, he picked up a pair of street urchins, simply because one of them had a red eye - frightened, yes, but as red as his beloved's.
Lacie had given the Core of the Abyss a toy rabbit, as she visited it for the last time. The toy absorbed her feelings, her joys, her sadness. Alice also happened to have an exact same rabbit, whom she named Oz. The doll had obtained a sort of sentience, having existed in both the real world and the Abyss at the same time, and gave up itself to be able to give Jack Lacie's last memory.
To give the memory to Jack was the request of Alice's twin, who resided in the Abyss, and who harboured the Core of the Abyss. Jack then realised that the two of them were able to switch bodies, one who would walk in the light, the other who would preside over the dark cobwebs underneath.
Lacie's last memory shattered any remnant of sanity that Jack had. He had one goal in life now: to bring this world Lacie loved to her. Of course, this would entail destroying it, but Jack couldn't bring himself to care. He was the villain of his own fairytale now.
The Will of the Abyss, Alice's twin, could create a creature, a Chain, strong enough to cut the chains holding this world away from the Abyss. Jack just needed a way to bring it to the world.
He befriended Arthur Barma, another noble, in order to get close to his sister, Miranda.
Miranda had a wide knowledge of the occult, and knew exactly how and when Jack could summon the Bloody Black Rabbit. The pair that Jack had picked up were actually the next heir and sacrifice of the Baskervilles, and the heir - Gilbert - would claim his first Chain in a ceremony.
Miranda would convince his brother, Vincent - who could touch the Core - to open one of the great Doors to the Abyss, and Jack could finally summon his Chain. All Jack had to do was deliver Glen to Miranda's waiting, murderous embrace.
Alice had to kill herself so that Jack could not beg for help from her twin again. So he would have sent the world to where Lacie was, if not for Glen. Glen, oh, Glen, his former best friend, thwarted him, as he was wont to do, being the mediator between Abyss and this filthy world, and Jack dueled him. Glen, who had to order the death of everyone in the capital, because if they fell to the Abyss alive, they would never reincarnate and be trapped in grotesque torture forever.
Jack was only successful in sending the capital, Sablier, into the Abyss. The both of them died, and the fairytale abruptly came to an end.
For a century, there was peace. Jack Vessalius, Hero of Sablier, stopped the tragedy and the demon, Glen Baskerville. Jack sacrificed his body, split into five seals, to keep Glen Baskerville from returning, as he tended to do. Four keys were made, one for each Great Door, one for each black-winged Chain Glen Baskerville held (save for one), and distributed to four dukedoms: Vessalius, Nightray, Rainsworth, and Barma.
(Not really. Jack had Glen's body split and scattered instead.
Jack was thrown out of the Abyss' hundred year cycle, left to wind and rewind in 24-year cycles (the age he had instigated the Tragedy), losing memories with every cycle. The only constant is Oz, the B. Rabbit, Jack's Chain. A century later, Zai Vessalius meets a child in a snowfall- Jack, on his last cycle before his memories vanish completely, and the latter convinces Zai to take Jack as a replacement for his stillborn son. Zai agrees, and his only heir is introduced to society: Oz Vessalius.
A hundred years later, Oz, the heir to the most important of the Houses, was thrown into the Abyss. Oz, Jack's Chain, reanimated in Jack's body, and Jack retained the contract. His soul was housed in Oz's, and the games began anew. Taking the role of the benevolent Hero, he carefully manipulated the boy - and Gilbert, Vincent, even, both who fell into the Abyss along with Sablier - into trying to prevent the Baskervilles from regrouping, from finding their master, from finding out the truth.
Alice, for some reason Jack couldn't fathom, was now the B. Rabbit, and held its powers. No matter. The girl would not stand between him and his goal. Through the diaries that he had Arthur fabricate - as Barmas were the historians of the dukedoms - nobody suspected that Jack was actively trying to recreate the Tragedy of Sablier itself, until it was too late.
Too late, too late, until Jack regained enough power to control Oz once again, to have his Chain cut the chains that held the world fast over oblivion. The dukedoms fell as Jack's lies and deception were uncovered wound by bloody, festering wound, and Oz was captured by the Baskervilles. It's here that our hero is pulled from Oz, and promptly deposited into the Port.
Point in Canon: Retrace 74, right after fading away back into Oz's subconscious.
Conditional: Brief summary of previous RP history: Previously, he'd only been in Siren's Port. Jack had become Ciel Phantomhive's adoptive father, and turned into a Magical Girl (Mage) by Kyubey. His death was by becoming a Witch, and it was by Vincent's hand.
Character Personality:
He's a head-turner - incredibly charismatic, blessed with great looks and the sort of hair women would kill for. He's chattery and happy-go-lucky, always armed with a smile and a compliment, though he might come across as a bit of an airhead.
Unfortunately, only the first sentence is true. The rest are part of a front that he puts up, because Jack, in reality, is an empty man. He's spent at least a decade working tirelessly to haul himself up from a street rat to one of the creme de la creme of society. Jack's been wearing a mask for so long that he's forgotten what his real face looks like.
He knows he's a manipulator, yes, but he doesn't realise how heartless he can be, since he's blinded by his singular obsession over Lacie - a woman who was, and is, his everything. He would gift the world to his deceased beloved, and that entails destroying it. He would destroy Lacie's only family, her brother, in order to bring her the world she loved so much. He would use a pair of brothers to further his own ends, seemingly without remorse, and he would destroy the lives of people a century later than his own time to finish what his best friend had given up his life for to prevent.
Jack loves completely, obsessively, unhealthily. It's a skewed love that's perfect in his mind, a love that justifies the means for an end that he thinks that is in his beloved's interests, but isn't.
Oswald is the first person to see right through him and tell him that he finds nothing. He describes Jack like water - a stretch of water so silent and still, that all you can see is a reflection - and that's what he is, really.
Jack himself doesn't quite know what his real self is like. It's shown in canon that he can be a ruthless, calculating chessmaster, whose determination spans time and death - he has no problem lying to further his ends. However, underneath this, he still retains some modicum of care for people he would not actively acknowledge as his friends - he seems to hold some regret for raising his sword against his best friend.
Conditional: Personality development in previous game:
Without Lacie to focus on, and without a way to return to his own world, Jack has latched on to the idea of family to distract himself from the ache of being helpless. He's mellowed a fair bit, and he's put on that cheerful front of his for so long that it's become second nature.
He finds that he genuinely regrets what he had done to Oswald, and he realised that he may have very well actually loved Oswald more than a best friend. He was in love with the idea of Lacie, not with her, but what he wanted the most, really, was a happily ever after with the both of them.
Character Plans:
Given canon updates, Jack would show more of his manipulative self, and I would like to see how he fares, once again, in a place where he can literally do nothing to pursue his goal.
Appearance/PB:
link
Writing Samples
First Person Sample
[The feed switches on, and Jack's...hiding up in a tree, it looks like. He's holding a bouquet of roses, too, and he points the camera downwards.]
I take responsibility for any and all physical altercations I may cause. [His tone is cheeky, and as a woman passes underneath the branch he's hanging onto, he tosses a rose down to her. He zooms into her expression.]
I tried doing this back home, and I got an arrow to the shoulder! Terrifying creatures, women. [The woman blushes, and hurries off; Jack turns the camera back to him with a sheepish grin.] Brightens their day up, most of the time, eh?
[He looks up and away from the camera again.] Now if only I could get one of their numbers...
Third Person Sample
The mirror in Jack's room is already spiderwebbed with cracks.
He'd punched it within a week of arrival, and went to bed, unblinking, as he stretched and flexed his bloody hand. He wasn't supposed to be here. Then again, Jack wasn't a stranger to not belonging, having spent years in a time, out of place.
The volunteers fell very easily for him, the charming young man who had returned to the Port, for some reason. He'd not spoken to anyone he knew from his home world, or from his memories in this place. There would be time for that; a homecoming could wait, and would be sweeter delayed. (And perhaps, he wouldn't forget his goals so easily again, faced with familiar faces who knew nothing of his lies.)
Jack took another look at himself and removed his earrings. He was already in the process of calculating the risks of working for both SERO and AGI, already discreetly asking around in the shadier parts of the city: what would it take to leave the Port again?
There's a knock on the door. "Jack? Hey, you ready?"
It was easy to fall back into his persona of hopeless skirt-chaser, easy to plait his hair back and smooth his face into a smile. Nobody could tell what sort of monster he was inside. "Yes, dear, of course, let's go—"
Name: Numi
Age: 22
AIM SN: N/A
email: surfacage@gmail.com
Have you played in an LJ based game before? Yes
Currently Played Characters: None
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Pandora Hearts
Canon Format: Manga
Character's Name: Jack Vessalius
Character's Age: 24
Conditional: If your character is 13 years of age or under, please clarify how they will be played.
What form will your character's NV take? An iPhone.
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities: By himself, Jack is a very competent swordsman. He can also shoot a gun, a skill he picked up from his previous stay in the Port.
Conditional: If your character has no superhuman canon abilities, what dormant ability will you give them? Jack previously had the ability to stop time for up to twenty seconds, with a fair bit of effort. I'd like for him to have that ability again.
Weapons: Jack has a Contract with the Chain named the Bloody Black Rabbit. Chains are eldritch abominations that hold great power, called by a human from the nexus of the universe's creation, a shapeless place called the Abyss. They make a contract with a human contractor - power in exchange for blood, or the contractor's life force.
B. Rabbit gives Jack the ability to wield a scythe - blood-red, spiderwebbed glass, razor-sharp, taller than him - with preternatural ease, along with the ability to call upon chains that pierce through and disembowel enemies. The Chain itself is a killing machine that is feared even among its kind.
His Chain also has the ability to break a world's 'chains', causing it to fall back into the place of its creation, the Abyss. (This ability will be disabled in the Port.)
Summoning B. Rabbit fully, however, would exhaust Jack considerably, until he builds up his endurance.
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History:
Once, there was a boy.
A waif with bright green eyes and even brighter golden hair, the bastard child of a noble and his mistress. His mother, driven mad by her lover's indifference after giving birth to Jack, passed away, and Jack was left to wander the streets.
He had nothing to his name, save for a few meager possessions, and an all-encompassing hatred for the world - for its inhabitants, for its cruelties, and for himself.
It was a snowy morning when everything changed, for him. There was a girl, nearly the same age as him, with hair as black as ebony, skin as white as snow, and eyes as red and as mischievous as rubies sparkling in the sun. Lacie was her name, and making Jack as uncomfortable as possible was her game. She stole food for him, burrowed into his filthy blanket, cut his hair, and generally made him feel like a human being again.
(Especially when she cut his ear. That was kind of weird, though he deserved it. The pain cut through the cold.)
Now, Lacie was a Misfortunate Child - as Jack understood, she had the pesky ability to attract people who wanted to do terrible things to her - as proved by getting picked up by two of these said people, looking to sell her for a pretty penny.
Things escalated pretty quickly from there. Lacie, seeing that her new 'friend' had been hurt, killed the antagonists of this little chapter of their fairytale, making it rain with their blood, and singing as she reveled in death. She was a Baskerville, part of a family rumoured to be death gods; they were looking for their lost princess.
Before they parted, Lacie gave Jack one of her earrings, and here we would expect the tale to end.
Unfortunately, we're talking about Jack. The event made Lacie Jack's raison d'être, and the desire to see her one more time gave him the strength to claw his way up from the streets to claiming his heir to nobility. He succeeded. It took him a decade.
He saw Lacie again, disguising himself as a performer, and when she became close and curious enough, he embraced her for the first time in his life. This ended with a glass of wine upended over her older brother, Oswald, a hilarious evening for her master, Glen, and a tearful reunion with his princess.
Happily ever after? No, not by any stretch of imagination. Jack had no way of knowing that Lacie was fated to be killed by her own brother (who loved and loved and loved her above everything), had no way of knowing that Oswald would take the name of his master and drink blood that wasn't his own. He had no way of knowing he wouldn't be able to stop it, either.
He spent two years of bliss, Jack the knight, with Lacie his fair lady, with Oswald his best friend.
And then she was gone, pulled by great black chains into the womb of creation and destruction, the Abyss. Oswald was gone, as he had taken his master's mantle, Glen, the death god that led the death gods, the Baskervilles.
Jack fell into depression.
Levi, the former Glen, came to him one night, as he lay awake in bed and wondered why he existed. Lacie's master had convinced her to have a child with him, because oh, Levi wanted an experiment. Jack came to find out that the child came from the Abyss, where his beloved was thrown into, and her name was Alice. Oswald was treating her like a human reincarnation of his guilt, a small slip of a girl that was an everyday reminder of the blood on his hands, while Jack-
Hope is a very dangerous thing, and that's what Jack had. A tiny sliver of hope. With all the power vested into her brother, wouldn't Oswald help Jack bring her back? Won't the two of them bring Lacie back together?
Hope is a very dangerous thing when crushed. Oswald - Glen - refused, saying it was impossible, but he knew, he just knew it was. Jack slipped on the mask he hadn't put on in years and set himself to scheme. He had nobody left. Two months after Lacie died, he picked up a pair of street urchins, simply because one of them had a red eye - frightened, yes, but as red as his beloved's.
Lacie had given the Core of the Abyss a toy rabbit, as she visited it for the last time. The toy absorbed her feelings, her joys, her sadness. Alice also happened to have an exact same rabbit, whom she named Oz. The doll had obtained a sort of sentience, having existed in both the real world and the Abyss at the same time, and gave up itself to be able to give Jack Lacie's last memory.
To give the memory to Jack was the request of Alice's twin, who resided in the Abyss, and who harboured the Core of the Abyss. Jack then realised that the two of them were able to switch bodies, one who would walk in the light, the other who would preside over the dark cobwebs underneath.
Lacie's last memory shattered any remnant of sanity that Jack had. He had one goal in life now: to bring this world Lacie loved to her. Of course, this would entail destroying it, but Jack couldn't bring himself to care. He was the villain of his own fairytale now.
The Will of the Abyss, Alice's twin, could create a creature, a Chain, strong enough to cut the chains holding this world away from the Abyss. Jack just needed a way to bring it to the world.
He befriended Arthur Barma, another noble, in order to get close to his sister, Miranda.
Miranda had a wide knowledge of the occult, and knew exactly how and when Jack could summon the Bloody Black Rabbit. The pair that Jack had picked up were actually the next heir and sacrifice of the Baskervilles, and the heir - Gilbert - would claim his first Chain in a ceremony.
Miranda would convince his brother, Vincent - who could touch the Core - to open one of the great Doors to the Abyss, and Jack could finally summon his Chain. All Jack had to do was deliver Glen to Miranda's waiting, murderous embrace.
Alice had to kill herself so that Jack could not beg for help from her twin again. So he would have sent the world to where Lacie was, if not for Glen. Glen, oh, Glen, his former best friend, thwarted him, as he was wont to do, being the mediator between Abyss and this filthy world, and Jack dueled him. Glen, who had to order the death of everyone in the capital, because if they fell to the Abyss alive, they would never reincarnate and be trapped in grotesque torture forever.
Jack was only successful in sending the capital, Sablier, into the Abyss. The both of them died, and the fairytale abruptly came to an end.
For a century, there was peace. Jack Vessalius, Hero of Sablier, stopped the tragedy and the demon, Glen Baskerville. Jack sacrificed his body, split into five seals, to keep Glen Baskerville from returning, as he tended to do. Four keys were made, one for each Great Door, one for each black-winged Chain Glen Baskerville held (save for one), and distributed to four dukedoms: Vessalius, Nightray, Rainsworth, and Barma.
(Not really. Jack had Glen's body split and scattered instead.
Jack was thrown out of the Abyss' hundred year cycle, left to wind and rewind in 24-year cycles (the age he had instigated the Tragedy), losing memories with every cycle. The only constant is Oz, the B. Rabbit, Jack's Chain. A century later, Zai Vessalius meets a child in a snowfall- Jack, on his last cycle before his memories vanish completely, and the latter convinces Zai to take Jack as a replacement for his stillborn son. Zai agrees, and his only heir is introduced to society: Oz Vessalius.
A hundred years later, Oz, the heir to the most important of the Houses, was thrown into the Abyss. Oz, Jack's Chain, reanimated in Jack's body, and Jack retained the contract. His soul was housed in Oz's, and the games began anew. Taking the role of the benevolent Hero, he carefully manipulated the boy - and Gilbert, Vincent, even, both who fell into the Abyss along with Sablier - into trying to prevent the Baskervilles from regrouping, from finding their master, from finding out the truth.
Alice, for some reason Jack couldn't fathom, was now the B. Rabbit, and held its powers. No matter. The girl would not stand between him and his goal. Through the diaries that he had Arthur fabricate - as Barmas were the historians of the dukedoms - nobody suspected that Jack was actively trying to recreate the Tragedy of Sablier itself, until it was too late.
Too late, too late, until Jack regained enough power to control Oz once again, to have his Chain cut the chains that held the world fast over oblivion. The dukedoms fell as Jack's lies and deception were uncovered wound by bloody, festering wound, and Oz was captured by the Baskervilles. It's here that our hero is pulled from Oz, and promptly deposited into the Port.
Point in Canon: Retrace 74, right after fading away back into Oz's subconscious.
Conditional: Brief summary of previous RP history: Previously, he'd only been in Siren's Port. Jack had become Ciel Phantomhive's adoptive father, and turned into a Magical Girl (Mage) by Kyubey. His death was by becoming a Witch, and it was by Vincent's hand.
Character Personality:
He's a head-turner - incredibly charismatic, blessed with great looks and the sort of hair women would kill for. He's chattery and happy-go-lucky, always armed with a smile and a compliment, though he might come across as a bit of an airhead.
Unfortunately, only the first sentence is true. The rest are part of a front that he puts up, because Jack, in reality, is an empty man. He's spent at least a decade working tirelessly to haul himself up from a street rat to one of the creme de la creme of society. Jack's been wearing a mask for so long that he's forgotten what his real face looks like.
He knows he's a manipulator, yes, but he doesn't realise how heartless he can be, since he's blinded by his singular obsession over Lacie - a woman who was, and is, his everything. He would gift the world to his deceased beloved, and that entails destroying it. He would destroy Lacie's only family, her brother, in order to bring her the world she loved so much. He would use a pair of brothers to further his own ends, seemingly without remorse, and he would destroy the lives of people a century later than his own time to finish what his best friend had given up his life for to prevent.
Jack loves completely, obsessively, unhealthily. It's a skewed love that's perfect in his mind, a love that justifies the means for an end that he thinks that is in his beloved's interests, but isn't.
Oswald is the first person to see right through him and tell him that he finds nothing. He describes Jack like water - a stretch of water so silent and still, that all you can see is a reflection - and that's what he is, really.
Jack himself doesn't quite know what his real self is like. It's shown in canon that he can be a ruthless, calculating chessmaster, whose determination spans time and death - he has no problem lying to further his ends. However, underneath this, he still retains some modicum of care for people he would not actively acknowledge as his friends - he seems to hold some regret for raising his sword against his best friend.
Conditional: Personality development in previous game:
Without Lacie to focus on, and without a way to return to his own world, Jack has latched on to the idea of family to distract himself from the ache of being helpless. He's mellowed a fair bit, and he's put on that cheerful front of his for so long that it's become second nature.
He finds that he genuinely regrets what he had done to Oswald, and he realised that he may have very well actually loved Oswald more than a best friend. He was in love with the idea of Lacie, not with her, but what he wanted the most, really, was a happily ever after with the both of them.
Character Plans:
Given canon updates, Jack would show more of his manipulative self, and I would like to see how he fares, once again, in a place where he can literally do nothing to pursue his goal.
Appearance/PB:
link
Writing Samples
First Person Sample
[The feed switches on, and Jack's...hiding up in a tree, it looks like. He's holding a bouquet of roses, too, and he points the camera downwards.]
I take responsibility for any and all physical altercations I may cause. [His tone is cheeky, and as a woman passes underneath the branch he's hanging onto, he tosses a rose down to her. He zooms into her expression.]
I tried doing this back home, and I got an arrow to the shoulder! Terrifying creatures, women. [The woman blushes, and hurries off; Jack turns the camera back to him with a sheepish grin.] Brightens their day up, most of the time, eh?
[He looks up and away from the camera again.] Now if only I could get one of their numbers...
Third Person Sample
The mirror in Jack's room is already spiderwebbed with cracks.
He'd punched it within a week of arrival, and went to bed, unblinking, as he stretched and flexed his bloody hand. He wasn't supposed to be here. Then again, Jack wasn't a stranger to not belonging, having spent years in a time, out of place.
The volunteers fell very easily for him, the charming young man who had returned to the Port, for some reason. He'd not spoken to anyone he knew from his home world, or from his memories in this place. There would be time for that; a homecoming could wait, and would be sweeter delayed. (And perhaps, he wouldn't forget his goals so easily again, faced with familiar faces who knew nothing of his lies.)
Jack took another look at himself and removed his earrings. He was already in the process of calculating the risks of working for both SERO and AGI, already discreetly asking around in the shadier parts of the city: what would it take to leave the Port again?
There's a knock on the door. "Jack? Hey, you ready?"
It was easy to fall back into his persona of hopeless skirt-chaser, easy to plait his hair back and smooth his face into a smile. Nobody could tell what sort of monster he was inside. "Yes, dear, of course, let's go—"