Jack

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Name: Jack

Gender: Male

Age: Old enough to drink, I swear.  Here, let me show you my ID, it's on me somewhere, I swear I just had it...

Race: Human

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Physical Description:  Jack could eat no fat, though this was not entirely true.  In fact, like the end of the rhyme, Jack could lick a platter clean, he just had...

"One of those metabolisms," he'd interrupt the thought to say, though he'd say it with the sort of apologetic smile that showed he knew well enough to be ashamed of his good luck.

Jack was also nimble.  Jack was also quick.  Maybe not supernaturally quick, or as nimble as a ninja, but he could tear up a dancefloor better than a werewolf in desperate need of a pedicure and knew how to move through the city like a ghost.  OK, so technically ghosts weren't necessarily nimble and just used the whole spectral entity thing to move unseen, but the point was, the boy knew how to move, seen or un.

He also knew how to dress.  At the very least, he had style.  Often thrift store style, occasionally Fine and Dandy (which was as store AND a style), or Saks (the one actually on 5th).

He had green eyes, or maybe hazel, depending on how the light hit them, and brown hair, or maybe auburn, again, depending on how they light hit him, or maybe his mood, with his tending to go from black and white to technicolor, from upturned collars in an old film noir to feather boas in a Broadway show, after all, both looks fit The City well.

Alternate Form: His favorite yoga pose is Half Lord of the Fishes.

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Skills: Jack was pretty up to speed on current events and pretty plugged into the ins and outs of the mundane power structures of the city.  He knew all the maître d's at the best restaurants and the doormen at the hottest clubs and he's got an in with most.  He can't cook to save his life and should never be allowed near a stove but does pretty well on a dance floor and has a mean bank-shot (whether on a pool table or an air hockey one).  He's fairly well educated and even has a piece of paper to prove it (assuming he still has an apartment, he lost the keys and isn't sure whether he's paid rent in the last few months so that paper might have wound up in the trash).

Powers: Jack is intimately connected to the City.  It speaks to him, sometimes literally.  OK... the city doesn't speak to him, its denizens do, it's buildings and bricks, it's graffiti and some other word that starts with 'g'.  It's unsettling to say the least, to have a rat stand up on its hind legs and start to talk in a Bronx accent (especially when you're in Brooklyn... what's a Bronx rat doing in Brooklyn?) or a roach chitter on and on about how proud it is of its kids getting into NYU or the Plaza Hotel, god they had high pitched voices.

Point is, while he was tuned in before, he's full-on hardwired now.  Not a lot goes on in the city without him knowing, or if it does someone went to some effort to keep it off his radar.

He's also got a keen sense of direction (but a terrible sense of distance), knows all the best shortcuts, manages to avoid all the worst traffic and can walk something a lot like the Ways from just about any alley or subway station.

He understands most of the languages spoken in the city (and there are so so so so many languages spoken in the city) and has a vast though scattershot knowledge of magic.  His own personal magic would mostly be considered sponsored magic, his sponsor being something or someone, he's not quite sure who or what and just calls it 'The City'.

He also has the standard abilities of a practitioner, magical sight, precognition, sensitivity to magic, and presumably better healing, though he'll have to get hurt to be sure of that (and who wants that).

Vulnerabilities: Jack has the standard vulnerabilities of a human practitioner.  He can be injured by normal means though he heals 'better'.  His magical prowess is tied specifically to the city, take him elsewhere and his powers would be greatly reduced and eventually utterly gone.  He's beholden to what he calls 'The Will of the City', which can be fickle at times and isn't the sort of thing that likes to be ignored.

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Personality: Jack had been an old money/trust fund baby with all the best schooling and was aiming to be one of those Instagram kids who posted selfies with cash fanned out in front of him at the hottest nightclub while some model in a dress at the top of her thighs poured champagne the wrong way so that it was almost entirely foam.

Had.  Was.  Now?

He'd seen stuff, knows stuff, like how the flash of a camera just makes shadows on the wall.  Now he's a big picture guy though it's such a big picture that it might be more than a human brain can handle.  Fortunately, Jack's got a big brain, it's just not the most focused one.

While he's generally pretty chill, The City, well, she's not all sunshine and puppies singing... well, he hadn't actually seen Hair or Godspell or any of those other feelgood 60's/70's musicals.  Wait, he had seen Joseph.

"I closed my eyes, drew back the curtain, to see for certain, what I thought I knew..."

The point was, sometimes people had bad dreams and some people deserved them and it was his job to give it to them, only there were 8.38 million people in the city and he was only one guy.  Make that 8.38 million 348, a plane had just landed at JFK.  He was still just one guy.  Two if you counted his reflection in the window he was passing by.

Backstory:  She could be loving.  She could be cruel.  She could be seductive.  She could be cold and she was possessive as hell.

He wasn't actually sure she was a she, that might just have been for his benefit, a goddess easier to serve than a god.  He knew that was sexist but the city had a way of forcing you to take a good hard look in the mirror now and then like that and expecting you to own up to all your faults.  It also had a way of being what you wanted it to be at times, like a high-class hooker really good at roleplay.

"She's going get me back for that one," he said to himself.  He loved her but he also kind of hated her.  It was one of those relationships you could call 'complicated' and tempestuous.  It might not have been Burton and Taylor complicated... Whitney and Bobby complicated... Tommy and Pam... Ben and Jennifer... before they got back together.  They seemed happy now... he really hoped they made it.

"She's definitely high maintenance."

Yep, she was definitely going to get him back for that.

"And she's super old."

He was already in trouble, he might as well get it all out.

She was an old city.  Not the oldest or anything, but old, a straight bourbon and cigarettes after sex kind of town.  She was also a modern city, which was probably why he tended not to discriminate beyond a soft spot for the tempest-tost and a hard-on for the privileged few; magical or mundane.

He was privileged himself.  The city had been good to him long before he'd been good to her.  He was probably still privileged, he hadn't actually checked in a while but he assumed his accounts were still in good standing unless someone had declared him dead.  How long had he been doing this now?  Shit.  What day was it?  It took him a moment to find a newsstand and check the date, the man at the newsstand staring at him warily, unsure whether he was going to pay for the paper.

"That's two dollars," the man pointed out, which had Jack rummaging through his pockets which were filled with an ungainly amount of coins, most of which turned out to be old subway tokens.

"They don't even use these anymore," he realized, pushing them around and counting out some pennies since they were the easiest to spot, "one, two."

"Three.  I mean, she could be a faerie for all I know or maybe one of the fallen," he trailed off, pushing around a few more of the coins, checking the blackened ones just in case she was Denarian.

"Two dollars," the man at the stand repeated impatiently.

"Sure, sure, I'm just saying, she could be anything.  You know what, I guess that's true of all of us, right?" he said with a smile, pushing out a couple of  quarters, two nickels and a dime.

"What's that now?"

"Seventy three cents."

"OK… seventy four, seventy five," he said, continuing on.

"You've been in this spot for twenty-two years now, right?" he asked the man.  It wasn't really a question.

"Twenty-two years and you've always kept it nice and clean, never missed a day.  She's noticed," he told the man, who was starting to think he hadn't been wary enough and should have sent Jack on his way with the paper, two dollars wasn't worth this headache.

"And let me get a two dollar Win for Life," Jack pointed at a locked display of scratch lottery tickets, shoving the coins back into his pocket and reaching into another pocket for a couple of bills, giving the man all the currency; let him do the math, it would come out to one tickets, the paper and a twenty five cent tip.

Taking one of the tokens he started scratching a couple of the spots before putting the winning ticket in the Need a Penny/Leave a Penny tray.

"You're in a generous mood today," he noted as he headed away, newspaper tucked under one arm.

"So what's next?"

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"The Sidhe have their knights.  The Outsiders have their Walkers.  The Vamps have their... well... I'm not actually sure what the vampires have, but they've all got some sort of champion, why shouldn't the City have a champion too?" he asked then shook his head.

"So she's got me," he said, then immediately realized how stupid that sounded and vowed not to say anything like that again.

He didn't think he was her first, but she was still playing pretty coy about that, like a girlfriend who didn't want to tell you how many guys she's slept with because she knew you'd never look at her the same way again.  That or maybe her last boyfriend was in prison getting jacked in the yard and adding a few more tear drop tattoos to his face while waiting for parole.

"Shit, it's not that, is it?" he asked the pigeon sitting next to him, but it did that pigeon thing where it tilted its head like it had forgotten which way was up, which he'd come to learn was the pigeon way of figuring something out, like they were literally trying to roll the single marble they had in their swiss cheese brain until it found a hole it could fit through.

They were actually a lot smarter than that and either just got a bad rap or played dumb for the tourists or at the very least were like Marylin Monroe at the end of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, smart when it was important.  They couldn't sing like her though.

"Coo, roo-oorhh, coo," the pigeon said, proving his point.

"Oh, I know what Doctor Who is, who Doctor Who is, my point is The Phantom or Moon Knight would be a better analogy.  The Phantom is a generational hero and Moon Knight is a sequential one," he explained, or at least tried to but this was one marble he could not seem to get in the right hole.

"Not this again," a rat complained from below.

"Yes this again," Jack complained in return.

"Doctor Who is the same person, or alien, he, she, it is an alien that regenerates into a new body every time they're nearly killed and they usually have their memories, except when it goes wrong like with Number Eleven, which is my favorite, but only because it was the first one I saw and everyone says your favorite Doctor is always your first," he argued, thinking his point was valid.

"So, if the last one was my dad, or granddad or something, which, I just can't picture, but big if, then The Phantom makes a better analogy.  And if I'm just some slub she grabbed at closing time then Moon Knight is the way to go," he said for the third or fourth time, he wasn't sure, he'd lost count.

"How about James Bond?" a roach suggested, poking its head out from underneath the collar of his coat, mostly just trying to get in on the conversation.

"James Bond was the same person, they just kept rebooting, like this stupid argument," the rat shot back, but now it was just them talking amongst themselves, Jack was going through the paper, keeping up with the news.

"Coo, ooh-ooh-roo" the pigeon added, which settled things to everyone's satisfaction and cued up the cool animated title sequence.

Go on... click on it.  It's safe...