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Digithe Joined: 24 Aug 2003 Posts: 884 | Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 2:27 am Name: Jean Auclair
Alias: Shadow Walker, Night Shade (?) Age: 28 Occupation: Teacher at Xavier’s school Alliance: X-Men Items: (None?) Description: Jean is a very easy going guy, who believes that life revolves around mistakes – first, making them, and then striving to not make them again. He is famous for maintaining his cool in almost any situation, and can always be counted on to keep a level head. This does not make in a good leader, however. On the contrary, Jean hates to have any real responsibility, always preferring to follow orders. Furthermore, if a situation is looking bad, Jean will be the first one to point it out. Another of Jean’s beliefs is that anything you do, you should do it well. Anything you do poorly, however, you should avoid. Jean excels in language – he is nearly fluent in just about every major Eastern European language, and can get by in China, Korea and Japan – he is nearly as good as a professional barista at making coffee, and can mix just about any alcoholic drink you can come up with to perfection. But, that’s about it. Explanations of long division are lost on him, and he won’t even go near a computer – any papers he writes, he does by hand and pays some random student to type it for him. Despite his extensive reading, he can’t even spell very well, and though he writes a beautiful, flowing script, it is often difficult to decipher. Though he has learned some hand-to-hand combat skills since joining Xavier, he is more dangerous to himself than anyone else with even a baseball bat. Don’t even mention firearms to him. With smooth, pretty strawberry blond hair, warm, kind blue eyes, and a winning smile, he has been known to turn a few heads. Though he has been on many dates, he does not believe in long-term relationships – anyone who thought they were “going out” with him for longer than two weeks was probably mistaken. Still, he does believe in friendship, and while he is slow to warm up, he is even slower to abandon. While he is generally not the outgoing type of friend who is at all the parties, he has a reputation for being reliable, and is always willing to help with any problem that may arise. Having gotten used to the dress code when he worked for the various mafias, Jean now always dresses nicely in well-cut suits. The least formal he will usually go is to wear, perhaps, a turtleneck with his suit jacket, instead of a dress shirt. If Jean is wearing anything more casual than that, it is a sure sign that something is up. Jean also carries himself just like he dresses – that is, with the swagger of a gambler, and the refinement of a winner. If someone points it out, he will always deny it, of course. Still, he naturally has a strong presence, whether he is trying to achieve it or not. Of course, his distaste for responsibility and too much attention often confuses people, leading him to just appear stuck up. Some might say, like a true Frenchman. Jean is very hardworking, and doesn’t mind trading a good night’s sleep for a night of being productive, if necessary. As a matter of fact, he rarely sleeps more than four or five hours a night, claiming that sleeping any more than that is just wasting daylight. He very conveniently ignores the fact that the hours he keeps are not exclusively hours in which the sun is in the sky. History: Jean was born in a poor district near Paris, France, growing up in an overcrowded orphanage. Like the other children of the orphanage, he never knew his parents, not even their names. His early life was not particularly interesting, with him being in and out of foster homes for quite a while until they simply gave up. Jean didn’t care – rather, he preferred the orphanage, where he could avoid attention and quietly read his books. If Jean enjoyed one thing, it was books. Though he didn’t own many himself – the orphanage could hardly afford gifts for the kids even on Christmas, so the only ones he owned were from foster families – he read them all several times through, then sold them to get more. His greatest achievement was getting a library card, and he stayed there as long as he could, and brought back as many as he was allowed. He read everything: poetry and prose, reference books and novels, even trying some Victor Hugo as he got older. When he had time in the library, Jean even learned basic Italian and Russian from some of the language tapes. However, orphanage life didn’t quite cut it for Jean. On the night of his fifteenth birthday he decided to make his own way in the world. He snuck out of the orphanage and walked all the way to Paris, where he spent his first night on a bench near the Seine. Because he looked old for his age, he managed to get a job waiting tables, and another working in a small coffee shop. Jean passed a couple years this way, eventually taking a job as a bartender. By the time he was eighteen, he had gotten to be quite good at mixing drinks and making coffee, and no longer needed to wait tables to make ends meet. From eight in the morning until four in the afternoon he made coffee, and then from five to midnight he mixed drinks at the bar, before finally retiring to his small flat. It kept him extremely busy and he was exhausted when Sunday rolled around, but he enjoyed it, and working almost a hundred hours a week let him save up a bit of money. A lot went to new books, of course, but he was determinedly saving to travel the world one day. Most people who heard about his work schedule thought he was crazy, but he claimed that he never slept much anyway, and if he ever did get tired, he had all the coffee he could ever want. On his twentieth birthday, Jean was stumbling in a drunken haze back to his flat – most of his regular patrons had insisted that he let them buy him a drink, and since he had many regular patrons at the bar, this meant he ended up drinking quite a lot. He was taking a small shortcut home, suspecting that he might pass out at any moment, when he stumbled upon some unsavory folks in a dark alley. Though he had always thought himself a rather lucky person, it ran out that night. Jean had happened upon a mob killing, and the guys were not eager to have a witness. They stabbed him in the arm once and were going for his throat when he stumbled backwards, falling through the brick alley wall. Jean awoke the next morning in his flat with his arm very loosely bandaged, the once-white cloth entirely red, but dry. Other than the stiffness in that arm, he felt fine – he almost never got hangovers – but could not figure out how he got home. He remembered the stabbing, and remembered patching it up with an old pillow case, but couldn’t remember actually walking back. He chalked it up to the liquor, but decided in any case it was time for that trip he’d been planning. Pulling out his savings and packing up his books, Jean moved to Italy. Having studied it as a child, he quickly picked up the Italian language, and settled right in. However, when his travel money ran out and his job at a local bar just didn’t cut it, he asked some customers for help. Those customers happened to be mafia, and they offered him a job. Though reluctant at first, he accepted the job and became a hitman. It wasn’t glamorous, but it paid the bills. It was through this side job that he fully discovered his emerging powers. With these in hand, he became very good at assassinations, able to pull victims through the shadows to high rooftops, off which he would push them. Nobody believed that they were suicides, but it couldn’t be proven otherwise. When Jean realized that he was getting too good at what he did, he left without a word, hopping on a train through Russia. Though sometimes he had money to get actual train tickets, he often just snuck onto freight trains. When he needed food and had nothing, he turned to thievery. He was good at this, too, but at least nobody died from it. Around his twenty-fifth birthday, Jean found himself in China. Though he had not studied the language much as a child, he picked up the basics and was able to get around, at least. He did not stay long, however. It was not only his weak language skills that caused him to stick out – this wasn’t exactly a problem, but he never quite felt comfortable – and he was only touring, anyway. After doing a few jobs as a professional thief to get some money, he moved on to Korea and then to Japan. It was in Japan that he took a fateful thieving job. Unknown to him, the target was a particularly high-ranking Yakuza boss, and somehow managed to catch Jean in the act. Being caught was such a surprise to Jean – with his particular abilities, he made almost no noise and never left sign of entry – that he fled immediately, falling into the shadow and moving as far away as he could. When he awoke, he was in a very hilly, metropolitan area right on the bay. In his haste to get away, he’d traveled through the shadows all the way across the Pacific Ocean, ending up in San Francisco. The strain of such a long-distance travel had left him exhausted; he had been sleeping for almost thirty hours, he discovered – more than he usually slept in a week. Not long after, he was discovered by Professor Xavier and agreed to join him, eager to get away from the criminal underground in which the majority of his recent life had been mired. Powers: Jean has the ability to turn himself into a physical manifestation of shadow. In this form, he can manipulate his appearance in any way he likes. Of course, it will be almost exclusively in shades of gray, so it is only convincing in low light, when color is only weakly seen by human eyes anyway. Also, in this form he is able to fall flat against any surface. He can then move almost instantly through any shadow he touches. Consequently, at night he can travel halfway around the world, though such a great distance has a great tax upon his body. As he has discovered, he can pull people through the shadows with him, though the difficulty is exponential with respect to the distance and the number of people – he can only move two or three people a couple blocks before becoming tired. While flat against a surface, he can take no damage, as he has no real physical form; on the other hand, he can deal no damage either, and cannot affect any physical objects at all. He can, however, have parts of his body take a physical form, stretching out of the shadow, which can, of course, interact with objects. When not in shadow form, he can manipulate his own shadow in any way he likes, so long as it stays attached to him, causing his shadow’s limbs to stretch, for example, in order to reach distant places. This shadow can manipulate physical objects by manipulating their shadow. For example, if his shadow grabs a bowl and appears to be lifting it off of a table, the bowl will rise up. Also, if his shadow appears to be choking someone, they will feel that they are being choked. This gives him a somewhat limited telekinetic ability, but is difficult to use – not only because he has to see the shadows properly, but because it requires a lot of focus. Furthermore, its range is limited by how big a shadow he has, and how far it reaches. If his shadow touches another shadow, he can use that to extend the range. Still, it is only really useful when he does not want to turn into shadow form for some reason. Other: Jean’s apartments in the mansion are lined wall-to-wall from floor to the ceiling with books. The only wall space not covered with books is covered in various bottles of alcohol, for his mini-bar – though there is certainly nothing “mini” about it. The bar is real wood, with room for three people and his espresso machine. Though he had originally planned to build the thing himself, some fellow faculty members ended up taking pity on him and building it in exchange for a few drinks – carpentry is right up there on Jean’s list of “Things I don’t do well.” Other than the bar-stools, the only real piece of furniture in Jean’s room is a sofa which he throws sheets on and uses as a bed at night, and a big, comfortable armchair with a stand lamp that he reads in. He doesn’t even own a desk, since he doesn’t have a computer and he can write just fine on the bar. The openness of his room, combined with the bar and espresso machine, makes it convenient for small gatherings. Professor Xavier gave Jean permission to use his room as a sort of on-campus bar and coffee shop, and uses the profits to replenish his stocks and buy more books. Jean is a huge Shakespeare fan, and can quote just about any line from any of his plays. He has even been known to act out some of the parts if asked, helping out students with interpretations. However, though he understands the material very well, he will probably not win any awards for his acting skill. Contrary to popular belief, Jean can, in fact, get drunk. He simply knows his limits and he knows how to drink smart. Incidentally, he almost never gets hangovers, but this is probably also attributable to the above. Few are aware of it, though some may suspect, but Jean has some obsessive compulsive tendencies. The bottles in his bar are all aligned perfectly at the edge of the shelf, in alphabetical order. The bar itself is always kept spotless, as is the espresso machine on top; the machine itself is exactly seven inches from the edge of the bar on three sides. The books on his walls are essentially divided into two – the first half containing books he’s read, and the second containing books he hasn’t. Both are organized alphabetically by author. Though he is not afraid of dirt or germs, some things simply must be just so. Jean is one of the heads of the Foreign Language and Cultures department at Xavier’s institute, and teaches mainly French, though students taking almost any language may come to him for help. His natural force of presence and quirks – not to mention his coffee, which is always available the night before tests – make him well-loved among the students. OOC: So, he's not Russian anymore. You all were right about there being to much Russian in my characters. Do I have a Frog yet? I don't remember, but I liked the idea, and I was able to actually start writing so I went with it. Anyway, I got the "pretty, smooth hair" and the Shakespeare stuff. Anything I missed? The whole thing is subject to change, but I wanted to throw it up to encourage everyone else to get to work on theirs ;)
Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Chocolate creme-brulee? |
The Ace of Spades Joined: 7 May 2006 Posts: 398 | Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 11:28 am Yay frog! I like it. And you have, in fact, inspired me to work on mine... |
| Digithe Joined: 24 Aug 2003 Posts: 884 | Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 11:53 pm Updated to describe how he dresses and what he teaches. Also, he's a bit OCD. It seemed to fit -- he's French. |
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