History of Jack

This is Jack's backstory, written by me (Wikikinetic) as a fanfiction. This will be updated every so often when more happens in Jack's life. Co-writer's credit for Chapter 2 goes to Skye, who was the other author of the roleplay that Chapter 2 was based on (viewable here).

Chapter 1

A tall, heavily built green porcupine named Jack slowly shuffled down the sidewalk of a mostly deserted town. He stared at the sidewalk in front of him, idly wondering why nothing was happening. This is so utterly boring, he thought. Oh well, I guess I'll just go home and…

As if on cue, Jack's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a girl screaming. Something in Jack told him that he had to look and see why someone was screaming, but another part of him told him otherwise. Girls randomly scream, he thought. It's nothing. Just keep walking...

And then he heard the man yelling. This time he could hear the words. "Just give it to me, and I'll stop doing this to you!" said the voice.

Oh all right, thought Jack. Now I have to see what's going on.

As it happened, Jack didn't even have to deviate from his intended path. He rounded the corner and saw a man banging a young girl against a wall—

Jack was in the fraternity house. They were torturing him to make him earn this privilege of being a part of it, torturing him—

—just like this girl.

Jack didn't have time to think. He couldn't have thought if he wanted to. Before he had a chance to process his surroundings any more, he was standing in front of the man with his fist raised.

"Let her go," growled Jack deeply.

The man chuckled. "Yeah, right," he said, dropping the girl and aiming a punch at Jack's head. At least, he tried to aim at Jack's head. Jack's fist collided with the man's stomach, sending the man into a seated position on the ground. Surprised, the man jumped up and aimed another punch at Jack's side, only to be punched into a nearby streetlamp, where he sat looking stunned.

Jack slowly walked over the man, making sure that the man wasn't going to try to hit him again. "Don't get up," he said. "Wait for the police to show up." Wait, the police isn't going to show up if— "Hey, you, random person," said Jack, gesturing to his side and not looking to see if there even was someone to that side. "Call the police. We need to make sure that people like this go to—" The man started moving, so Jack sat on him. "—prison." This was the point at which Jack realized that there was only one other person who was in the area, and that person was making no move to call the police.

"Hey, person!" said Jack. "Why aren't you calling the police?"

The person shrugged. "I don't have a phone," he said.

Jack sighed. "Oh fine," he said. "I'll call the police." He pulled out his phone, dialed the police, and waited for them to arrive. Just as Jack was wondering why the random bystander was still there, the man spoke.

"By the way," he said, "you fight real well. Have you ever thought of makin' a career out of it?"

Jack looked up at the man. "No," he said.

"Well," said the man, "If you ever want to improve your fighting skills, there's this place called the Bloodied Hands Arena where you can face off against just about anyone. There are no hazards involved, because the rules won't allow for anyone getting seriously injured or dying. The arena would revive them if it did."

Oh huh, thought Jack. That sounds handy…I could just do this, try getting a little better, it'll make things a little less boring, and besides, what else am I doing with my life?

"I knew you'd be sold on it," said the man. "When do you want to go there?"

Jack eyed the man suspiciously. "Are you a telepath?"

"No," said the man, "I'm just good at readin' faces."

Yeah right, thought Jack. Oh well, I did want to go there, so…

"How do I get there?" he asked.

"I'll teleport you there," said the man, "and I can teleport you back."

"It's a deal," said Jack. "Take me there tomorrow morning."

Chapter 2

Jack slowly walked onto the battlefield, his boots making a lot of noise as he shuffled along the floor. He was paying no attention to anything except for the floor, despite the fact that he knew that he was about to be plunged into a life-threatening battle. This was because, quite frankly, he barely cared about what happened in the battle, as he was only there because he thought that it might be interesting.

Soon after that, a winged hedgehog landed smoothly on the sand, looking around. Her electric blue orbs flickered around, before landing on her opponent in front of her. She mentally growled, knowing that this battle might or might not kill her.

Jack looked up upon seeing the hedgehog land. It was at this moment that it suddenly occurred to him: Wait, I usually just attack automatically because I'm so angry at the opponent. How do I fight without that? Let me stall for a bit…

"Oh, hi," he said in a bored monotone. "We should probably exchange names before we kill each other. My name's Jack, what's yours?"

"Keira," she growled. "And 'nice' to meet you Jack."

Jack stared at the floor again, muttering under his breath, "Usual formalities…" …apparently don't give me enough time to think of a plan. I guess I'll just have to wing this. He looked up, shrugged, and said, "Well, now that's over," and instantly charged at her, hoping to knock her back or at least temporarily disorient her.

Once he made his first move, Keira immediately sprinted to her left, before stopping on the opposite direction of where Jack was standing. Jack skidded to a halt just in time to avoid banging into the arena wall. After he stopped moving, he started looking around, confused. His move had disoriented him instead of his opponent, and had also made him realize that the battle was not going to be easy. "This is not how I usually do this," he muttered under his breath. "It's always so much clearer..."

Keira, meanwhile, had her electric blue orbs focused on Jack, analyzing what type of fighter he was. She then fired an electric blast at Jack.

Jack saw the blast coming too late to avoid it, so he simply ducked, letting part of the blast go by. However, the rest of the electricity hit him, causing him a noticeable amount of pain. "No..." he said, loudly enough to be audible. "This is not...happening..." Frustrated at not being able to come up with a plan, he suddenly charged at Keira again, although he was slightly better prepared to stop himself from a collision should one occur again.

Once again, she moved to dodge, but she purposely let a part of his attack hit her, while she mentally took note of his strength. She then flew into the air, firing lightning bolts at Jack. Keira stayed airborne, looking from above, like a hawk locating its prey.

Jack dodged some of the lighting bolts, but was hit by some of the others, knocking him over. Jack slowly stood up, getting into a defensive posture as he did so. He then looked up to see what Keira was doing and noticed more lightning bolts—this time raining from the sky—which Keira had summoned to attack him. Jack seemed indecisive for a moment, then rolled to gain momentum and launched himself at Keira. This is completely not going to work, he thought. Maybe it'll at least distract her…

The winged one glanced down at her opponent, then created a ball of electrokinesis, turned it into an electric dragon, and controlled it to force Jack on the ground. She then swiftly landed on the sand, before hitting Jack with the flat side of her axe, launching him up high into the air.

Jack was caught completely unprepared by the double assault, bearing the full brunt of the attacks and landing hard on the arena floor—

Six months. Six months of torture. All since he joined that stupid fraternity when he came to college, they'd been torturing him as part of an initiation rite. He couldn't take it any more after six months, and he wasn't going to take it now either…

Jack got up. He was injured by the landing, causing him to fall to his knees upon standing up. He then looked up at Keira and said in a tone of barely restrained anger, "You're going...to wish...you never...did that..." With these words, he stood up and charged at her for the third time in the battle, his mind running on auto-pilot like he was used to. If he could think, he'd be pleased that his usual combat strategy was kicking in.

Keira countered Jack's attack with a wave of electricity. "Careful, that might paralyze you," she muttered, before flying upwards again.

Jack was now running so fast that he just sidestepped to dodge the wave of electricity, then dodged back to try to grab Keira's leg and keep her from flying out of his range. Keira snarled before landing again on the sand, then disappeared.

Jack looked around for Keira. His mind was starting to turn on again. What am I doing here? he thought. I'm fighting against an opponent who I can't see, who's probably going to kill me while I'm not looking, and—

Without warning, Jack fell to the floor, hit in the back by the blade of Keira's axe. Before he could process anything further, the world went black.

About a minute later, Jack woke up. Oh, he thought. Okay. I guess the arena brought me back to life or something. After a few seconds, he managed to drag himself to his feet. "Nnrgh..." he groaned, starting to walk out of the arena, then collapsing onto one of the walls, thinking, I have to get better at fighting so I won't fail again like I did this time.