Jack Hawksmoor

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John Cooper “Jack” Hawksmoor
Full Name: John Cooper “Jack” Hawksmoor

Series: WildStorm Comics

Threat Level: City Smasher
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Gender: Male
Species: Enhanced Human
Age: 29
Birthdate: July 8
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 180 lbs

Short Description: A nondescript white guy with black hair, not particularly large. No shoes. Miscellaneous: Private investigator, vigilante, weird guy who talks to cities

John Cooper “Jack” Hawksmoor
Not overly tall, nor particularly bulky, this man would tend to go unnoticed most of the time. His dark hair is cropped short, coming to a widow's peak in front. It has a bit of a tendency to be untidy. He has thick, slightly angular brows, a large nose, and thin lips. Most of the time, his eyes are a dark, reddish brown, but occasionally they glint red, a light behind them that may not quite appear to be human. His form is that of somebody who is extremely fit, with abs that are slightly visible and powerful arms and legs. It is not a bodybuilder's physique, but much more functional in its appearance. However, he does have one immediate, distinguishing feature: He is not wearing any shoes. His bare feet, when lifted, show a mechanical pattern to them, something which looks somewhere between metal crocodile skin and the surface of a tire. This appears to be integral to his feet rather than anything that is fastened or glued on. As if to accommodate this, he wears trousers that appear to be about a size too short.

His clothes are relatively simple. He wears black dress slacks, a white shirt (no buttons, seeming to be more like a plain t-shirt and, when it is cooler, a black blazer. All the time. If the man has a wardrobe, it is made up of many of the same items.

John Cooper “Jack” Hawksmoor
Urban symbiosis: Although Jack still considers himself to be human (except on his bad days), he really isn’t. He’s closer to a highly altered cyborg, his internal organs having been replaced with a mix of cybernetic implants and biological organs of non-human origin. The downside is that he can only survive in cities. If removed from an urban environment, he can only survive outside it for more than a few minutes unless sustained by drugs (of which he has a very limited supply, but which can keep him alive for as long as an hour. If he can get more it would help in an emergency). Within the city, however, he has superpowers that have led him to be nicknamed “The God of Cities.” Additionally, Jack has no pulse (which has caused him some problems in the past), as his heart was replaced with a magnetic pump. He does not need to sleep or eat, but draws everything he needs from the city’s waste products, as it were. His eyes flicker red when his powers are active and the red glint is also visible in the back of his pupils if somebody looks real closely. If cut, he does not bleed blood, but rather a silver liquid that is part organic, part nanotech. He never wears shoes, allowing him to always be in contact with the city. His powers fall into four basic areas:

Physical enhancements: Because of his enhancements, Jack has some level of resistance to damage. His density is somewhat flexible, and is normally at a high level that makes him resistant to damage. He can take small arms fire, but will be damaged by, say, a grenade launcher. Also, as long as he is in the city, he heals at an accelerated pace. Flesh wounds will heal in a matter of minutes, broken bones in hours. Breaking his bones is also harder because of their density. However, he has no particular resistance to pain.

Communication: Jack’s ability to communicate with the city is essentially an attunement to a resonant field. He generally views cities as female, although there are exceptions. (Cities, to Jack, have distinct character and personality). Most of the time, this link is subconscious, but it allows him to sense everything that is happening in the city…most of which he, of course, tunes out. Generally, he only notices things that are important, although sneaking up on him is nearly impossible. A superhero fight going on on the other side of the city, though? He’ll notice, and he might well show up to help. He actually feels damage to the city he is in as physical pain, which is more intense if the damage is more severe or closer. His senses are slightly beyond human, with better than 20/20 vision, a sense of touch that can pick up on vibrations of moving objects, and a sense of smell that can determine what objects are made of. With concentration, he can go further. Things he has been known to do include literally “watching” events in a room he is in which, while generally not admissable evidence, is highly useful to an investigator. Generally, this is much easier with a reflective surface and he often has to touch something. Finally, Jack can always speak and understand the most commonly spoken language (or sometimes two or three) spoken in the city he is in…but only that city. For example, if he is in Tokyo, he can speak Japanese, but he “forgets” it if he goes to New York.

Transportation: Jack moves through cities as if he was part of them. This allows him to:

  • Teleport from one part of the city to another, using a reflective surface.
  • Teleport between cities that are on the same planet and plane of existence. This takes at least an hour, longer if the cities are smaller (meaning less energy). He emerges from a transit womb, a kind of concrete cocoon
  • Phase into the ground or through walls. He can take his clothing and small items with him. If he phases other living beings, they experience significant pain, an experience he generally reserves for enemies who piss him off.
  • He can stick to any surface, as long as his feet and hands are not covered.
  • He can leap beyond normal ability, including from rooftop to rooftop across wide roads and the like. He always lands on his feet.

Command: Jack can command cities, much as a man orders a dog. This is his most dangerous power, and fortunately it comes with a limitation: He feels any damage that is done as a result. If he overuses his powers, he gets headaches and nosebleeds and can easily be incapacitated for a time. This means he is capable of:

  • Repairing buildings, streets, etc, by touching them. It appears that his powers give the city itself the temporary ability to heal. Although he can technically reconstruct entire neighborhoods by this means, he generally only repairs damage rather than doing anything that would add to or alter it. He respects the city too much. This “healing” is not instant and can take anything from a few minutes for a cracked window to many hours for major damage.
  • Drop buildings on people or cause the street to swallow them. As Jack tries to avoid killing, he only does this when pissed off or when he needs to slow down a superpowered foe, mecha, or whatever.
  • Cause parts of the street to erupt, creating barriers to block his enemies or using the ground to throw them around.
  • Command lamp posts, benches, and other street furniture, using them as animated constructs.

Jack cannot command objects that are not integral to the city, nor can he alter actual living beings, such as trees. Generally, he reserves high levels of power for situations in which they are truly warranted. If he can solve the problem by punching it…or even better talking to it…then he’s much happier.

Skills: Parkour: Okay, so he cheats, but even if he didn’t have his powers, Jack would be an expert traceuse. He would never enter a competition, of course, but he enjoys nothing more than a good run through the city. Investigation: Jack is a trained detective, familiar with both mundane means of investigation and using his powers and abilities. He has worked with the police before, and while he has no desire to become a cop (too many rules), he generally respects them and knows the protocols to work with them without pissing them off. Combat: Jack is not a martial artist. However, he is a competent street level fighter. He generally fights in an acrobatic style, making much use of the environment and terrain against his foes, and seldom stands up and fights. Construction and Architecture: Needless to say, Jack has a both instinctive and learned understanding of how cities and buildings work. He has a brilliant ability to analyze a building and knows exactly how to make it collapse…or quickly keep it from doing so if he does not have time, ensuring that civilians can evacuate. He also understands the jargon construction workers use and has been known to hang out with them just to talk buildings.



Background

John Cooper Hawksmoor was born to an ordinary middle class family in Brooklyn, New York. Sadly, they were not a functional family. Essentially a latchkey kid to his career-minded parents, he was ignored by them. Nobody believed him about the aliens. Had they taken him to the doctor, they would have, but he seemed a healthy child and they were not people who thought…well. To be honest, it would have been too much work. He has long suspected they produced him only because having children was expected. His abductors put him through an agonizing transformation, slowly replacing almost all of his internal organs with alien technology, instilling him with nanotech that responded to the unique psychometric field of cities. He was designed as a symbiote of sorts, a walking interface that communicates with the “pattern” formed by cities. All of which they more or less left him to work out on his own. In his mid teens, he ran away from home (and his uncaring parents appear to have only felt relief) and began to explore the world. Able to teleport between cities, he traveled. Then he did the thing he was designed to do - defeating an evil time traveling city from the future. No, he hasn’t done anything like it since, and perhaps never will. (Giant Mecha Tokyo. It’s a thing. But not outside a plot, I *promise*).

Afterwards, he slipped away and tried to stay below the radar of his world’s superhero community, many of the members of which were unpleasant. He returned to New York, where he took courses in criminal justice and eventually gained his license as a private investigator. Then StormWatch, the world’s elite super force, came calling. Henry Bendix managed to convince him to join Jenny Sparks’ team, and the two became fast friends (and occasional lovers). However, he never fit in. Unable to live on Skywatch, their station, because of his unique needs, he was always a little bit on the outside. His disillusionment increased after he was forced to work with a psychopathic killer known as “Rose Tattoo,” a being so disturbed that she was locked up and chained in a closet between missions. He was forced to kill her to prevent her from crossing every line…which made him very keenly aware of what his lines were.

And Stormwatch is now in danger. Jack…finds himself in another place right, perhaps, when his world needs him the most. Or perhaps this is more about what he needs.

Notes

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