rexbox | The Great Jack-Off of 2014

The Great Jack-Off of 2014

Maybe you took the wrong turn in Fort Frolic, and found yourself in 'Gallery of Narcissus' (which is of course a Hall of Mirrors). Or, maybe you're rich enough to have a huge walk-in-closet, and while you walked in looking for the light, you just kept going. Or maybe you lost track of where you were wandering in the haze of an ADAM high.

Or some other reason - it doesn't matter. Because now, Jack, you're wandering through a labyrinth of mirrors, and no matter where you turn, you see your face.

You're pretty sure that's your face. You're pretty sure that's you, but - is it moving the same way you are? Are you sure?

((ooc: SO THIS IS HOW IT'S GOING TO GO - first comment/tag wherever in a thread, you list your Jack's info in the thread title, NAME / AU / TIMELINE. Example: Jack Wynand - Good End - Post-Game, or Jack Ryan | Batya | Chapter Nine, or Jackie•FemJack Harvester•Neptune's bounty and so on and so forth. Pretty it up as much as you want but have that basic info in there for your first tag so we know what we're working with!

And after that...! Tag around. We don't have to cram up in one thread! Different Jacks could be meeting at different times, form adventuring parties, cross paths with another pack of Jacks, whatever.

For now we're in a standard multiverse meet up kind of thing, but I figure everyone's acquainted, we could start moving to other locations! :D))

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Jack's expression doesn't change at the 'really'. Though, come on, you can't expect someone you've never met to not ask that, right?

But then, she answers, and Jack's looking confused again. Not completely incredulous, mind, because he's seen some serious shit by now, but one of his eyebrows makes a break for his hairline, and his mouth slants like he's not sure whether to laugh or frown.

He shakes his head again, but not as much as the first time, because really, this was ridiculous. There's no way that this woman's name is also Jack. Besides, wasn't that a guy's name, anyway? That couldn't be right.

He risks breathing on the glass again, to freshen up his first question, and then jabs his finger towards her, in case she misinterpreted that nod as him asking her if she knew who he was? Or something??

She frowns again. Did he... not like that answer? It was true, so she doesn't see why he would disbelieve her.

Maybe he wants her full name?? But almost nobody uses her full name. To papa Suchong she's "you", to papa Fontaine she's "kid" or "Jack", to other scientists she's various numbers and designations. Only mama Tenenbaum calls her by her full name, and it's usually when she's being scolded.

Still, she gives it, grudgingly.

"Jacklyn?"

There, is that better?

Both eyebrows go up this time, but not as far at least. Oh, so uh. He guesses it could be a girl name. Still, it's a hell of a coincidence. But, he nods this time. Just once, to show that he got it that time.

He gets close to the glass again - and he's getting a little less slow and cautious with each approach.

He writes another small word on the glass.

JACK

Then he jerks his thumb at himself.

So you can see why he was confused.

Yeah, she's taken her finger off the trigger by now, though she still has the gun in hand and slightly raised. More and more, the situation seems -- confusing, rather than dangerous.

She moves a little closer to the glass, just a step or two, still a comfortable distance away.

Without a lot of life experience, it's hard to know what to make of coincidences. But that's a pretty neat coincidence. And overwhelmingly, she's used to things like that being engineered.

Dudejack might be confused, but this Jack gets a look of understanding. She nods.

It must be a deliberate part of the test.

The only question is what she's supposed to do with it.

Well, uh, good for her for not looking as confused. It puts just a little bit of suspicion back on Jack's face that she takes it so plainly, but... Either she knows something, or she's just better at this than him somehow.

Hopefully it's the former.

There's only one other question he really wants to know the answer to, and unfortunately it might take more than four letters to ask.

He looks at the glass between them, thinks about it, and takes a huge breath.

As quick as he can, he writes: FONTAINE?

And there's another thing she has trouble interpreting. Is he asking where Fontaine is? Is he asking if she knows Fontaine? (Actually, scratch that -- it can't be that, everyone knows Fontaine.) Is he asking... something else entirely? Scrawled one-word questions are tricky. It's a bit obnoxious of him to be mute, really.

Jack glances up at the ceiling, and across, wondering if she'll spot a security camera, reminded that she must be being surveyed. Maybe the man is asking if Fontaine's watching them right now. Well, she has no way of knowing that. Sometimes he graces the tests with his presence, sometimes he doesn't.

"He might be there?"

''Might''. He'd better be here. He nods, looking grim.

He writes again: WHERE

This seems like a good point to place a reminder that Jack has a lot of blood on his sweater, and not all of it is from his DIY throat surgeries.

Hey, if he does a test badly enough to get blood all over him, that's not Jacklyn's problem.

...Is he doing tests? It's possible. There are other girls here having lessons and tests as well, although she only sees them rarely. On the other hand, she's never seen a person her apparent age running tests. Or a man, for that matter. And theirs have never overlapped with hers.

But if he's not running his own test, he must be a part of hers, just like O'Brian. She narrows her eyes and wishes they'd give her more of a clue about what to do here.

They've put a dangerous-looking man here, looking for Papa Fontaine. And they've put together a scenario that seems pretty nonlinear, which maybe means they want her making decisions as well as just solving problems; unusual, but not unheard-of.

Do they want her to... not help him?

She's not sure. But it's worth mentioning that she's been standing here puzzling over this, instead of answering, for a lot of seconds.

He waits.

She's taking a conspicuously long time to answer. So whats her angle then? Is she working for him? Or is she weighing the risks of betraying him? Or does she honestly not know?

Jack's shoulders get more tense. He can feel his hand tingle with the need to slap it against the glass, as if that'd remind her to answer (or startle it out of her), but he's at least together enough to realize she still has her gun, and startling her might not be the best idea. Even if he's pretty sure he can handle getting shot once.

His head tilts a little, so he's glaring at her with a little more intensity, waiting for the answer.

She's not sure. She's not sure. So she chooses an answer at random and runs with it, because there's nothing more useless than staying still.

Jack opens her mouth, and carefully asks a question that she doesn't ask very often:

"Why?"

Ha. He's not sure he has the breath to sufficiently get across the why. He rolls his eyes, a little. Because, really, this is what's holding him up?

This is useless, he decides. He steps back, shaking his head, and then waves his hand, motioning her to move aside.

She moves, ever obliging, sideways and back several paces.

But she keeps a tight hold of her gun, because she has an idea of what he might be about to do.

If her idea was 'shoot the glass' then she is completely correct!

When she's out of the way, Jack's gun is raised again and he shoots the glass. It shatters impressively easy, actually, compared to the panes in the rest of Rapture. In fact, there's enough room for him to step through, if he's willing to tap a few pieces here or there for a clearer route.

It's probably a good thing that that WAS her idea, because otherwise she might be startled into shooting at him. As it is, she trains the gun on him firmly again. She's very aware of the barrier between them being removed.

Go ahead with stepping through if you're going to step through, man.

Don't mind if he does, thanks!

She still has the gun on him. So hey, he's got his pointed back at her too, but it's more insurance. 'Yeah, yeah, I have a gun too. What are you going to do about it?'

Actually, that's a good question. He raises his eyebrow. If he wanted to shoot her, he'd have shot her already, right? Still, he kind of wants to head in the direction she's blocking. So other than that eyebrow, he wiggles the gun as another silent request for her to step aside.

This time, she doesn't move.

They wouldn't put someone so clearly important in her path if she was supposed to be letting him go, right? She's been trained in a lot of things, fighting and killing prominent among them. Her training has had a conspicuous lack of letting people go.

Of course, a harder question is: what is she supposed to do?

"...where's O'Brian?"

It's natural for someone raised in a tiny environment to operate on the assumption that everybody knows everybody.

Jack blinks, squints, and tilts his head. Who? Name doesn't ring a bell.

... But it sounds suspiciously Irish.

...Or maybe everybody doesn't know everybody. Two whole people have failed to recognise her, after all. Hmmm.

"He's shorter than me. And blond."

There, she devoted a whole seven syllables to a description. Jack-over-there must know him now!

Nope, that doesn't ring a bell. Well - not for anyone real, anyway. He shakes his head. Doesn't know him, hasn't seen him.

Then he motions her to move aside again.

Okay, that's going nowhere. Think. Maybe that's not what she's supposed to be asking. Why did he seem suspicious?

Oh right, he was asking after Fontaine.

She frowns, and stands up straight in an attempt to look imposing.

"Why are you looking for Papa Fontaine?"

Well. That's a question that needs more words to answer than he can give. Or maybe not:

After some deliberation, he raises his free hand, with only the thumb out, pointed at his neck, and he moves it across in swift, slash of a motion.

(But it's while he does it that his brain picks up on the odd thing out in her question: Papa Fontaine? Who the hell would ever think of him like that?!)

Oh.

Oh.

There's really no way to misinterpret that gesture, and Jack is hit by anger. She's not sure if it's training or instinct or just this surge of protective indignation in her chest, but -- for once not thinking of her scorecard -- she fires the gun.

Fortunately, that's about the time Jack realizes how significant 'Papa Fontaine' could be to his situation.

Well, not the whole deal, but some of it: The armed person in front of him has potential loyalty to Fontaine, and he just made his intentions clear. The look in her eyes right before she pulls the trigger fulfills that potential, and Jack attempts to get out of the way. The best he manages in the narrow hall and narrower window of time is twisting, but hey, at least the bullet hits somewhere else in his chest instead of his heart.

It hurts, more than the lance of pain from his neck when a sound tries to grit out. At that point he's acting through reflex more than thought - his gun hand has swung wildly out of the way as he tried to dodge, but his plasmid hand was still in a good place to retaliate. It's probably one of the sloppiest electro-bolts he's fired, but all he needs it to do is to stop her from putting one in his head while he recovers.

She's already following his movement with her gun, and she squeezes the trigger again -- but the Electro-bolt only has to catch her a glancing blow to go snapping up and down her body. Everything shakes and pops out of control. Her shot goes about as wide as you can possibly imagine, and a high-pitched noise escapes between her teeth.

It feels like fire, but sharper. It's like the zaps they give her when she does something wrong, only ten times more so.

Has she done something horribly, horribly wrong?

The answer is 'probably'.

Well, it sounds like that vague plan has sort of worked out. Jack, meanwhile, hits a mirror and slowly slides down it, teeth bared and jaw clenched in pain.

Okay. Okay, take stock: what hurts? Chest and throat. Throat was low-priority though, chest ranked a little higher, even if the gunshot didn't feel that strong. It wasn't a through-and-through, that's for sure, but he was kind of in a hurry so digging the bullet out would have to wait. He sucks in a breath through his teeth and rummages with his free hand for a first aid kit. The other hand still has the gun and has it pointed around where he remembered the woman being, roughly.

The Great Jack-Off of 2014

now neither of us will be virgins!

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