OOC: Taxon: application
Your name/crazy internet handle/whatever: Heather/Spish
Personal journal: spiritsshadow
Email: HPFerret@aol.com
AIM: separated entity
Characters in Taxon (if applicable): The Master
Character name: Agent J (formerly James Darrel Edwards III)
Genre (TV/books/etc): Movie
Fandom: Men in Black
Canon point: Day or two after the second movie
Why this Character and Canon point?:
Because J is awesome and despite the fact that I’ve continuously avoided bringing him to Taxon, he’s a very loud character. Um, I mean. Um. Canon point is post the second movie, since I don’t feel like torturing him in drawing him from other strange places.
Programmed Possession:
A heavily upgraded, black 2003 E-500 Mercedes-Benz. Four doors, with the ability to transform itself into a flying vehicle, controlled by a device very similar to a Playstation controller. It also has an auto-pilot feature, only usable in its standard form. A small remote accompanies it with the normal lock/unlock features, as well as calling the car to his location, and opening/closing doors.
Abilities/Weaknesses:
J is used to having an arsenal at hand and without having HQ around, he’ll be very limited. But even without his guns, J has a strong survival instinct. It helps that he’s young and full of energy, with a high agility.
He can, however, still take quite a beating, and keep getting up once or twice. His determination generally outweighs his thoughts on if he can actually survive a situation, but he’ll put his life on the line to stop an alien invasion, or anything to remotely do with the destruction of his planet. It happens a lot. His body is use to being beaten and broken, healed, and then banged up again.
Just the same, he can dish out the combat thrown at him. He’s a very physical fighter, both from experience and spending all his free time at the gym.
He also has gotten quite skilled with basic computers, as he’s been mostly working (and getting headaches) from the higher tech ones in MIB.
Finally, it may not necessarily be a weakness, but J will be keeping unique hours. Everyone at MIB runs on a thirty seven hour day.
Psychology/Personality:
Personality-wise, J is, first and foremost, very sarcastic. He does not hold back, and he doesn’t care to. It’s how he deals with work - both people and aliens, and it’s hardly going to change anytime soon. He’s changed significantly from the days of being a flashy youth from before he joined MIB. He does have a soft spot for woman, of course, although with his job he’s learned that meeting new people can often be unfair, and sometimes not getting ‘emotionally involved’ (as K would put it) is the better course. It doesn’t mean he won’t, though. It just means he’ll probably regret it later.
As a MIB agent, J has grown into being a leader. His mentor (for a grand total of two days, unfortunately) was the top agent, the best of the best of MIB and J replaced him. Because of that, he sunk into the role and the job became his life and he saw fit to free anyone else from the it that didn’t seem like they were enjoying it, or couldn’t handle it; that was his way of helping people.
Although to everyone else he seemed colder and uncaring, as if he would neuralyze anyone he thought screwed something up. He wasn’t about to let other people in the workplace get close to him, after all.
J’s personality improved when K returned to being a MIB agent, but then J also fell away from being a leader and was, more or less, in K’s shadow. On the plus side he became a more tolerable person, and on the downside he was making rookie mistakes that in all reality… he shouldn’t have been.
He can overreact and lose his cool, especially over his five years of dealing with all the stupidity that the human race can get into. One of the first things K taught him is that a person is intelligent, but people aren’t. One minor thing can explode to full-blown panic, and this fact of life is frustrating to the max for him.
If a person manages to get let over his mountain of a wall, they likely have no idea the feat they accomplished. As an agent, J does not exist. There is no record of him in any database; his former identity, James Edwards, is deleted. An old memory: “If he doesn’t exist, how can anyone ever love him?”
But J is rash, impatient, vocal, and dead honest. He has far better people-skills than his partner, and a caring heart for those he thinks deserves it.
History:
The MIB agent was not always known as “J.” For a long time he was James Edwards, a man who worked in the NYPD. His skills had been taken note of when one night he chased down a cephalopoid (who he thought was a human with eye problems); he was the only one to keep up with the kid, racing through streets, jumping onto a bus, and continuing on until he cornered the kid atop a building. The kid, terrified, babbled on about “He’s coming” and blinked another set of eyelids before throwing himself off a building.
James had a hard time explaining the situation to his superiors. With good reason, they wouldn’t believe him. Instead, he got a chick from the morgue that did, and shortly after, a man in a black suit. A man who seemed to completely understand him, although he seemed very… strange regarding his questions about what happened. He took James to Jeebs’ pawn shop to get him to identify the gun that the cephalopoid had used, but Jeebs wasn’t entirely willing to part with the information until K shot his head off, causing James to freak out and draw a gun on him, the situation growing weirder when Jeebs’ head grew back. James pointed out the gun and they were on their way outside, K explaining about aliens and how he wouldn’t remember anything by morning. Before James can really say that you just don’t forget that sort of thing, K neuralyzes him and James’ head clears to find himself in a restaurant with K laughing over his own joke. K gives him a card with an address and tells him to “be there or be square” before he’s off.
James finds himself in Battery Park, apparently late, to a meeting of “the best of the best.” Little did he really know what he was being recruited for. They were run through several tests and James stood out with his personality and bright colors and the way he saw the world, but in the end K still chose him. While he still thinks that K is insane and in need of a CAT scan, his mind changes when the man goes to get coffee and the “worm” aliens are in the room.
He’s given time to think his decision over, and by morning he’s made up his mind and he returns. He loses his identity - fingerprints, his name… He becomes Agent J, and he doesn’t have long to get use to the job before they’ve got a bug (a giant cockroach, who takes the skin of a man as a disguise) on the planet, a dead prince, and a galaxy that needs finding before their planet is destroyed.
Sounds like a fun few days, doesn’t it?
They realize that the galaxy is on the collar of the dead prince’s cat that was hanging around the morgue, but the bug reaches the same conclusion moments before them and escapes with the galaxy and the woman from the morgue, Laurel, to find a way off the planet. MIB has his ship though, and closes off any way that he could escape, only J remembers that the saucers in Queens are real ships and the pair are quickly off.
They shoot down one of the ships and the bug stumbles out angrily. When told to put its hands on its head, the bug rips off the skin and knocks the partners aside. After eating K’s gun, he tells J to make sure the bug stays on this planet and before J can even put up a fuss, K gets himself eaten. Determined, J puts up a fight and all his attempts are flawed until he finds himself thrown against a rusted dumpster, where out fall a handful of roaches. J’s eyes widen in realization and he steps on one, the crunch resounding all the way to the escaping bug, and after another few crunches, it angrily returns back to the surface to put an end to J - when K’s gun charges and he blows his way out from the inside.
K calls Zed saying they got the galaxy and while reminiscing about the past, the bug reforms and once again nearly eats J, only to be blasted apart a second time… by Laurel.
Returning to headquarters, J tries to convince K not to neuralyze Laurel - she did save their lives, after all. He takes out the small device anyway and when J can’t understand, K says that it isn’t for her, but for himself. He hadn’t been training a partner, but a replacement. J neuralyzes K and takes Laurel on as a partner.
Five years later, J is still at work... and with a new partner, who doesn’t last much longer. After having a mess up with a giant worm named Jeff, J saves a train of people and then takes his partner, Tee, for pie, where the man has a breakdown exclaiming that he’s going to be neuralyzed. J does. He returns to headquarters alone, where he seems to have adjusted to his new role quite well, although he’s gained a reputation of neuralyzing MIB personnel, worrying many of the people he comes across on his way to Zed’s office.
Zed is determined for him to have a partner, and the alien, Frank (disguised as a dog) becomes his new one. J immediately asks for more work, and though Zed is reluctant to give it at first, J wins out in the end and is sent to a pizzeria where a murder of an alien had occurred. He questions a female witness, who he immediately falls for, and later makes up some excuse to keep from neuralyzing her. He moves onto a park where MIB personnel quarantined a section off. The witness, Laura, had spoken about the Light of Zartha and J is looking over a ship that Zed mentions is Serleena’s - all of which is impossible. The problem was solved long ago, and the only agent that knows anything about it… is a neutral.
K.
J gets to him before Serleena can. He finds him as “Kevin Brown” in a post office. He tries to explain his case (and really he should have remembered when K first explained MIB to him) and is recommended a mental health clinic. He follows K into the back and quickly reveals that the only reason that he’s comfortable there is because all the workers are aliens. J does manage to convince him to go with him (although he got a punch in the face after mentioning his wife).
After returning to headquarters, J is completely overlooked, already in K’s shadow even if K still has no idea what’s going on. He takes the man to deneuralyzation, but MIB is breached by Serleena and they flush themselves out of MIB. The only other deneuralyzer is in Jeebs’ shop. Figures. They manage to get Jeebs to work it, and afterwards K stumbles off (Jeebs pleads with him that his brain needs time to reboot). The shop is broken into, cronies sent by Serleena in search of K - J explains that K is a neutral and he’s the “trigger-happy” replacement. They decided that if he’s useless, they’ll kill him, but J is luckily saved by K, who seems to be back.
But he has no idea about what’s going on.
They go back to the scene of the crime after deeming MIB a trap. K is annoyed that J didn’t neuralyze Laura (among other things), but it goes forgotten after J realizes that his partner left clues for himself. J keeps K from neuralyzing Laura and takes her to stay at the worm’s place, on suspension for stealing from the Duty-Free Shop. He gets a kiss from her before he leaves, and then leaves to meet up with K again.
Grand Central Station is their next destination, hoping to find another clue inside. A small gathering of tiny aliens living inside a train locker provide them with such. They return to him a watch (with 59 minutes left on it), and an outdated video store card. At the store they find he reserved a video that he never picked up - entitled “Mysteries in History: The Light of Zartha.” Watching it, the quality is low, J realizes that it jogged K’s memory, and as it plays on, K corrects the little details of what happened. It was the only time he ever saw K show any real emotion.
The light was hidden on Earth, never sent off the planet like it should have. J neuralyzes the video pair and catches up with K - again (see a pattern here?). Over the communicators, he checks with Laura - who has a bracelet that is now glowing for the first time, and then with Frank (although what they don’t know is that Serleena mimicked his voice).
They arrive at the worm’s place to find Laura gone and the worms in pieces. The worms pull themselves together and go with the pair to retrieve some weapons in a secret compartment at a family’s apartment, and then are finally off to their headquarters. They part ways in the elevator - the worms to shut the power off, J to get to Laura, and K to… well, deal with Serleena. K tells J not to come back for him.
J faces down Jarra, an old enemy that he locked away for trying to steal Earth’s ozone. Small (literally) problem; Jarra made mini clones of himself. J fights them all off, saving Laura from launching off the planet. He, of course, goes back for K and saves him from Serleena. Pressed for time, they check her glowing bracelet which shows the departure place for the light (to return to Zartha) and the three rush from headquarters to it, chased down by Serleena in a ship.
After warnings about a certain red button that J desperately tells his partner not to press, their vehicle transforms into a flying craft modified to hyperspeed and they rocket into the sky. J takes control from K and leads them down into the subway, and although it leaves them no space to dodge the fire, J quickly locates Jeff the giant worm, just missing his teeth, and skidding passed as Jeff eats Serleena’s ship.
They make it to the departure point, and annoyed, J asks K about the light and where it was… and he points at Laura. Neither of the pair understand and J takes notice of their surroundings, realizing that K is right, and he slumps against the car, realizing that he’ll have to let her go, and that it never seems to be fair.
Jeff rises high above the building from a glass window and angrily J tells him to get back in the subway, when Jeff’s head explodes to reveal the serpentine head of Serleena. J jumps out in the way of Serleena’s attack on Laura and gets tangled up in her appendages, fighting them off with teeth and fists, yelling at K to help him out until K finally focuses on shooting him free. J sadly watches Laura go, and a wounded Serleena tries to give chase; the partners go for the big guns to finish her off. J asks why K didn’t tell him about Laura and K asks “Would you have let her go?” to which J has no response to. They head back to the car, J wondering if Laura is K’s daughter but hardly gets a question out before K says something about cleaning up MIB. J complains that most of the city just saw what happened and they need to think out a plan, and K stops him by putting on his glasses (J doing the same, although confused), and he presses a button on his watch that neuralyzes the whole city from the Statue of Liberty.
J exclaims he wants one of those, and they head back to headquarters.
A few days later of having some time to cool down, he instead finds himself in Taxon’s arrival chamber.
It’s always about aliens.
Arrival Post (Third Person):
“K, man, really, will you just drop it already?” J was mid-gesticulation when he found himself suddenly out of MIB headquarters and into Taxon’s arrival chamber. His words cut off and his arm hovers in the air, then he slowly glances around him to take in the surroundings. Kidnapping! Damn, he was in the middle of a conversation! Couldn’t they have waited, just a bit? He was about to win that one, he was sure of it.
With a frown and a sigh, J stuffs his hands in his suit pockets and peers about in silence for a surprisingly long moment. Then, “What? No big ol’ greeting? Just stuff me up in this place and leave me?” He scoffs and shakes his head. “Man, talk about a terrible kidnapping. I’ve seen better, thanks.”
He glances up, squinting at the device on the ceiling, expression becoming more and more confused. “Never seen one of those before. Upgraded model, maybe? Naw… still looks too different from the last one.” Which had its ups and downs, because it meant he wasn’t about to be dealing with the same goons who threw a party kidnapping them the last time, but it also meant he was dealing with new folks. Hopefully they’re amateurs.
J heads down the steps, walking past the pedestal before stopping mid-pace and backpedaling to glance down at it. Well. J did like prodding at his toys. Kidnapping or not, he was still going to manhandle the tablet, grinning a bit when he flips it open and raising a brow at the homing signal on part of the map. “Huh. Now that’s different.” Another look around the room. “Awright, still pulling the silent treatment?” He fans the tablet before him. “This your way of appeasing the black guy? Coulda at least zapped me in with my partner…”
Which begged the question if K was in another one of these chambers or still at headquarters wondering if disappearing was part of J’s argument to drop the subject on Laura already. Seriously! Him, Zed, and Frank would just not lay off! He was a grown man for god’s sake!
Irritated, he stuffs the tablet in a pocket, only just then realizing the bracelet. He groans, loudly. “You have got to be kiddin’ me…”
Additional Third Person Sample:
J stares at the tabletop, covered in several plates of different kinds of pie, each one with a missing bite. He looks disgusted. This was not going well. At all. “It should not be this damn difficult to make a piece of pie,” he scowls. Everything he’s hatched has turned out terrible. It wasn’t the best way to be spending his time, sure. If K ever showed up he’d be getting a mouthful for slacking off, but all he wanted was a piece of pie! A good piece of pie. None of this crap he’s been putting on the table.
“Man, maybe I should just hire a cook.” It’d be more of a stress-reliever, which is all he wanted in the first place. Bit of pie always made a day better. “Stuck in a damn alien city with a lack of proper resources, bunch of people crazier than Manhattanites, and not a single lead.”
The only plus side of this whole whacked situation was that he had the car, which likely irked K to no end. Maybe he’d just pull the old ’n busted LTD out of the archives though, or wherever it ended up. No doubt it’d make him a little less grouchy.
He stands from the table finally, makes a quick note across the tablets for ‘free pie’ (hey, maybe someone wouldn’t notice the partially eaten pieces, or wouldn’t care) and exits out on the streets. He clicks open the driver’s side door of the Benz, slides in, lets his frustrations simmer a moment, and then hits the road again. ’Least he didn’t have to worry about speed limits. Drive as fast as he wants around this rat maze of a city - because that’s what it had to be. What sort of alien kidnaps a bunch of people and leaves them in a city?
The kind that likes to experiment on the inhabitants.
Hell, he hated that kind.
Later, he would maybe try one of the bakeries in the city, but the Extras made him uncomfortable. Like there was more to them, like maybe the bodies were just exoskeletons for the real thing. “Everything’s about invasion and war and power these days…” he grumbles, barely hearing himself after he lowers the windows and lets the air coast through. “Not sure I can figure this one out on my own.” He slams on the breaks and just stops and sinks back into the leather, pulling a hand down his face.
He had to get out of here. For all he knew, Earth was being invaded right now, because he was stuck in some goddamn city.