Jackal
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
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| Jack Grey points out the Jackal's Bite (not shown) at the Cap au Diable Airport. | |
| The Jackal | |
| Player: Aku | |
| Origin: | Science |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Corruptor |
| Threat Level: | 50 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Jack Grey |
| Known Aliases: | "Union", "Lucky Jack" |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 32 |
| Height: | 6'0" |
| Weight: | 220 lbs. |
| Eye Color: | Blue |
| Hair Color: | Black |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | British |
| Occupation: | Mercenary |
| Place of Birth: | England |
| Base of Operations: | East London |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | Jemma Grey (sister) |
| Known Powers | |
| Biological Tissue Control | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Ex-British SAS Soldier with Exceptional Skill, World-Class Sniper, Black Ops Specialist | |
| Equipment | |
| Customized Vanguard 'Redding' Rail Rifle ("Lucille") | |
| ' | |
Origin
Jack Grey was born in East London to a working-class family, and generally had an uneventful life. His younger sister, Jemma was far brighter than Jack was, and excelled in academics while Jack was largely involved in athletics. A skilled Rugby player in his teenage years, Jack often had his younger sister tutor him to get him through classes, while he usually had her back when it came to her getting picked on for her general 'geeky' disposition. Jack avoided going to college, instead opting to enlist in the British Army, where he learned skills that would inevitably lead him down a very corrupt path. Cutting his teeth in various countries, he started to see how the world really worked. Everyone was out for themselves, in the end. Trust noone. Suspect everyone. He didn't let it get to him at first, believing in teamwork to get the job done. His inspiring, if rough personality led to his fellow soldiers calling him "Union", due to his patriotism and willingness to try to get his unit to work together perfectly. This would eventually make him a very competent and capable leader, and he was picked to join the Special Armed Services (SAS).
Jack would become a talented sharpshooter while in the SAS, though he was skilled in performing many duties and cross-trained across various fields. His long-distance accuracy was nurtured by his CO, who routinely set him up against other soldiers in rifle tournaments, and he brought back numerous medals as a result. This minor bit of fame earned him a few clippings in the London Gazette, and it caught the attention of the top brass of the SAS, who wanted to see what Jack Grey's combat unit could do. Upon reviewing the scores and abilities of his team, the SAS dispatched the tight-knit group to handle Operation: Esmerelda, a top-secret mission that would take them to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean near Scotland, into a massive underwater complex called Esmerelda. The research performed in Esmerelda was classified, but it was clear upon docking that it was some type of extra-terrestrial experiment by the British Government. Jack Grey's team was sent to Esmerelda to ascertain the fate of the crew, who mysteriously stopped transmitting any information from the deep. Assuming it was 'merely' an equipment malfunction, Jack Grey's officer thought it was a routine in-and-out mission, but the horrific truth was beyond anything their team had seen before. He had truly stepped foot into a world he didn't belong...
Esmerelda, upon investigation... was completely abandoned. The crew had all but disappeared, but all the lights and equipment continued to function normally. Upon entering the central control station, and reviewing the logs up until their last transmission, the team realized the science crew had captured an underwater creature and was using it for their biological weapons division. Nicknamed The Breather due to its distinctive respiratory system function that it used to support its massive body, it was being experimented on for the last three years. None of the scientists knew the Breather was pregnant, and was quietly gestating over that time -- nor did they know the Breather was asexual and reproduced in a cloud of spores in the ocean deep. The 'bacteria' growths the scientists kept cleaning off the tank were in actuality its offspring... but their accelerated life span would be undetected while placed in the waste storage tank for further analysis. The tank eventually shut down from a clog -- the maintainance worker sent to open the filter doomed them all when the creatures adapted to the pressurized, open air environment Esmerelda offered... and subsequently killed and devoured every living thing on board. And Jack Grey's SAS team was next on the menu.
The firefight that ensued was horrific. Within 3 hours, everyone but Jack had been killed either directly -- or indirectly by the creatures in the facility, and Jack was fighting to survive. Using scavenged weapons and what ammunition he could find, he fought his way to the escape craft, slaughtering the blood-thirsty undersea monsters as he went along. His only mistake was not triggering Esmerelda's self-destruct sequence. He returned to the surface of the Atlantic, braving a massive storm in his vessel until being rescued. Upon debriefing, Jack Grey was sent to another, more elite SAS team, swearing not to divulge anything about Esmerelda. While the organization involved behind the experiments secretly returned to purify the underwater complex... and continue their research.
Nicknamed the Alpha Dogs, Jack Grey's new team was accustomed to otherworldly missions that the majority of the Earth didn't know about. Designated their sniper, Jack Grey's experience on Esmerelda changed him in both body and mind. Working out to an obscene extent to bulk up to be able to handle any threat, abusing steroids, and being a general adrenaline junkie... Jack vowed not to be the victim again, and despite working as a team... knew he only had himself to depend on before anyone else. The Alpha Dogs were the best of the best, and Jack knew it. There even came a point when Jack thought he was better than any of them... and often challenged his seasoned leader's decisions with an arrogant machismo you wouldn't expect from him before. His skills with firearms had only improved, and he took to practicing various martial arts and other close-combat fighting, and he became a capable pilot. His steroid abuse took its toll on him, however. His heart function was highly irregular, and his liver was badly damaged from both steroids and liberal amounts of alcohol. He kept going, however... and was eventually sent back to Esmerelda years later in another operation. Not knowing another team of scientists had set up shop there again... it seemed to be the same story as before. Only the Alpha Dogs cleaned house. The vastly mutated "Breather" children, despite adapting to even more things (like fire), were all slaughtered when Jack Grey led his team into the nuclear reactor and flooded Esmerelda with lethal radiation -- killing the Breather and its children once and for all. While waiting in the lead-shielded 'recovery' unit and sending a distress signal, the Alpha Dogs had begun infighting as the stress of the situation took its toll. More than anything, they blamed Jack for not divulging the entirety of the situation to them before they arrived... and Jack had enough. He told them all he was leaving when they got out, and he was going alone. Comparing him to a dishonorable dog, his team derided the arrogant and rude man with only one name. The Jackal.
Jack Grey left Esmerelda when a rescue team arrived, but found out he had asked for more than he bargained for. Despite killing the Breather and its offspring with radiation... the 'rescue' team was actually a 'cleaning crew' and had killed the Alpha Dogs for knowing too much. Jack Grey would have been one of them... but he had already made his decision to go maverick. Picking up where he left off... he battled his way through the heavily-irradiated facility, fighting off a destroyed thyroid and other illnesses attributed to radiation sickness, while gunning down the Black Ops team sent to silence him. Hijacking their craft, a vast technological masterpiece beyond anything in the British military at the time... the Jackal dropped a nuclear depth charge on his way back up to the Atlantic, and turned Esmerelda into a magma-filled crater at the bottom of the ocean.
Escaping to France via the English Channel on board the craft, he knew he was dying, and knew someone out there could fix him. It turns out there was someone out there. Someone who the British SAS had been trying to capture for some time... the enigmatic Sister Salvation, a technology guru who sold reverse-engineered equipment on the black market to anyone with enough cash. She had been looking for Esmerelda as well, and was delighted when Jack Grey sent out a distress signal with his last bit of strength before falling unconcious from his grievous injuries. Sister Salvation and her robotic minions on board the hovership Angelfire used a tractor beam and pulled Jack Grey's craft on board. While her robots took to dismantling the SAS's top secret underwater vehicle to rebuild it -- and sell many more later... Sister Salvation took the broken body of Jack Grey into the infirmary where she projected his still-living brain into a virtual reality simulator, while the rest of his body was shutting down. Revealing her identity as none other than Dr. Elizabeth Fairchild, she offered to restore Jack's body... for a price. Unwilling to die, he accepted. Sister Salvation hooked his otherwise dead body and placed it in a massive tank of nutrient fluids, and placed his body in a state of suspended animation while she prepared her equipment. Using Esmerelda's biotechnology files downloaded onto Jack Grey's ship, she decided to double-cross him. Figuring Jack was dead anyway, she decided to combine the adaptive traits of the undersea creature's physiology to the tried-and-true method of nanotech. Figuring it would either consume Jack -- or repair him... the insane scientist injected him with the experimental nano regenerator serum, while making off with the entirety of Jack's money, assuming he wouldn't need it anymore if he didn't survive the procedure. If he did? She'd simply say it was her black market fee. Jack survived, however. The nano regenerators cleansed his body of the radiated cells, healed his burns, rebuilt his thyroid, mended his gunshot wounds, repaired his damaged eyes, even went as far as to regrow his hair, and destroyed the massive tattoos he had inked on his flesh (at least the parts of it that weren't burned), seeing the ink as a foreign substance. The operation was a success, but Jack still felt cheated when Sister Salvation took him for all he was worth. Penniless, Jack Grey took to the name "the Jackal", and struck off on his own in an attempt to regain his wealth.
He took to doing numerous jobs alone over the last few years, only taking the most expensive, dirtiest jobs to make as much money as possible in the shortest amount of time. Along the way, he found his body adapting to various things. He suffered colds half as long, then a third as long. He stopped getting sick altogether after a while, as the nanites in his body acted as a super immune system and identified any disease he came in contact with as a threat and subsequently destroyed it. Any wounds he suffered in battle wound heal faster and faster. The more bullets he 'caught', the faster the healing process would start, as his body began adapting to the 'normal' environment of being stabbed, shot, and burned. He had to rely on his mind more than anything science gave him, though. If he took one particularly traumatic injury and didn't hang on... his body would identify itself as a threat and kill him, luckily... Jackal had everything to live for, and bit the bullet no matter how many times he got knocked down, depending on the nanites to rejuvenate and rebuild his body.
Other than mercenary work, the Jackal would often be contracted to deal with other superpowered heroes and villains. Anyone who was a threat to a corporation's payday might find themselves in the Jackal's crosshairs. Several 'masks' found themselves getting killed right before acting in the interest of the common good by a lone gunman. If anyone found the Jackal... they'd beat him down into a pulp, not knowing he's only come back later while his body adapted. The Jackal eventually learned how to 'bodyhack' people as an adaptation to the hard life of killing and capturing aliens and other superpowered beings. Upon physical contact, the nanites could identify the person he was touching and immediately degenerate their cellular structure as a foreign organism. The resulting puddle of ooze was quite unpleasant to be around. Jack would eventually harness and refine this ability to 'bodyhack' through practice, trial and error, and sheer will. After a while, he found he no longer could kill people alone by touching them -- instead the nanites would swarm around the subject and heal them too... although upon completion, the nanites would simply shut down and 'die'. Jack eventually became known as "Lucky Jack" in mercenary circles when he'd place his hands on a wounded criminal and bring them back from the brink of death, and numerous merc squads recruited the Jackal to function as their combat medic, and good luck charm. Recently, Jack gained even more control over the nanites in his body and could send them out through the air. Simply gesturing or thinking about it could send the microscopic nanoregenerators around him to repair cellular damage to people a good distance away. He found the highly malleable and adaptive swarms of cell-sized robots could still degenerate, to a limited extent upon concentration. He would force himself to inflict the feeling of pain on others, usually through his trademarked war cry he called the "Jackal's Howl", and the nanites would swirl about him and immediately begin eating away at the cellular tissue and armor around him for a short time. The nanoregenerators made life-ending injuries 'merely' a setback, and he could even 'will' his body to eliminate the feeling of pain altogether, allowing him to take unrealistic levels of physical punishment without flinching. Upon touching another person, he could over-ride their nervous functions and cause them to feel extreme pain, or cause them to curl up into convulsions. It's theorized this ability will grow in time like the rest of his powers.
His skills brought him to Paragon City, where he engaged in a few high profile assassinations. He was captured, however... and placed in cryogenic suspension in Brickstown's prison, surrounded by a magnetic field that disrupted his nanites ability to adapt to the extreme cold, while allowing Jack Grey to survive in a comatose state. Arachnos freed him at some point... cutting the power to the magnetic field in his prison cell. No longer affected by the electric-disrupting waves, the nanites resumed where they left off, and woke Jack Grey up -- where he shattered his icy shell and broke out of Paragon City. Recruited into Arachnos as a combat medic for the "spiders", he had only one condition for his service: a blank check. He again was tricked... because while he received a debit card with a seemingly unlimited amount of cash? It only worked on the Etoile Islands. He was penniless -- anywhere but the domain of Arachnos, ensuring his continued servitude... he was too poor to flee. He'd try, however... but his money would always be spent on booze and gambling, along with gratuitous amounts of ammunition. It would seem the Jackal couldn't adapt to everything.
Powers
Limits
Equipment
Jack's main weapon is a customized Vanguard 'Redding' Rail Rifle he's affectionately named Lucille. Given to Jack for his efforts against the Rikti forces, Jack has worked endlessly on the rifle for speed, performance, and firepower. The rifle has several different settings located on the stock, which can be flipped instantly to change the payload. The 'Rail' of the interior of the rifle has been altered to accomodate the Jackal's specialty ammunition. Powered by electromagnets when loaded with his high-velocity rounds, it becomes a railgun capable of sending a lethal shot at near-instantaneous speed. When not in use, the electromagnets shut off to preserve the structural integrity of the rifle, though the Jackal is working on the possibility of ensuring every round that goes through the rail is electromagnetically launched, but his experiments have not been met with success. He normally carries multiple specialty ammunition in a gun rig around his waist, and sometimes in a bandolier. He carries a combat knife in his right boot. During one successful hunt, he bagged a prestigious bounty on an Arachnos fugitive, John Starkweather. Though Starkweather later survived the Jackal's sniper round, he had already claimed his reward -- a decommissioned Arachnos flier, and spent most of his earnings modifying it with enhanced sensors, a more maneuverable engine, and replaced most of the passenger seats with stasis fields for transporting prisoners and critically-injured targets. He normally carries a 'caller' on his person to summon the Flier when his target is down. Jack Grey christened the vehicle the Jackal's Bite. He uses the ship to move from island to island in secrecy, and the cloaking device ensures noone knows where he might be lurking.
Personality
Jack Grey is lewd, crude, and doesn't have any problems using crass language and starting fights. A downright greedy scumbag, he's willing to do any job if the price is right. He's notably addicted to gambling, and often blows his earnings on drinks and games, and scarcely knows how to save money. He's been described as a smartass, and has little issue with manipulating people to get what he wants. He's out for himself and noone else when it comes down to brass tacks. He's a very predatorial figure, often sizing other people up as competition or prey before they even look at him. He has a very feral attitude, from a life of growing up in the underbelly of society, and trying to stay alive in the Rogue Isles. He's fairly arrogant, and downright bitter to his enemies. He has little in the way of etiquette, and when drunk has been known to submit to pyromania, psychotic shooting sprees, and other insanity. It's thought the nanites eat away and rebuild his brain tissue during these bouts of madness. A good night's sleep usually leaves him waking up feeling normal again.
OOC Notes
Jack Grey aka the Jackal is inspired from a lot of the protagonists in 1980's and 1990's action flicks. Stallone, Arnold, Dolph Lundgren, and Jason Statham. He's largely drawn from the characters of Ellen Ripley (Aliens Franchise), The Terminator, John Rambo, and others in a similar vein. He's influenced by such video game stars as Duke Nukem (Duke Nukem Games), Jennifer Mui (Mercenaries Games), Kano (Mortal Kombat Games), Isaac (Dead Space), and Gordon Freeman (Half-Life Games). He's inspired from comic book characters such as Sabretooth, the Punisher, Union Jack, Deathstroke, Deadshot, Bullseye, and at times... Deadpool.
