Jack Denning

[Scottie]

General Information

Name:  Jack Denning
Epithet: Dead Eye Denning
Age: 26
Gender: Male
Birthplace: South Blue
Species: Human
Orientation: Right Handed

Crew: N/A
Ship: N/A
Theme Song: Into the Wilderness
Occupation: Bounty Hunter
Bounty Collected: 0
Allegiance: Money, dear boy.
Dream(s):

• Make money.
  
• Make more money.
  
• Make even more money.
  
• Meet a nice girl, settle down, and start a family. Nah.
  

Character Information

Appearance:
Jack stands at a fairly average height of 182.8 cm (6') and weighs 160 lbs (11.4 stone /2.5 kilos). He has naturally straight dark brown hair that hangs just a few inches shy of his shoulders, with no side burns, but he does have a thin layer of stubble across most of his face. He has a pair of dark blue eyes that many a man and lady have called striking and haunting with the same breath. Jack's skin is naturally white, but most of it has been darkened to a nice tan by constant exposure to the sun.

Jack prefers to wear practical clothes, but with a little bit of flair all his own. He wears comfortable and rather common shirts and pants, with a notable preference to earthy colors like tans and browns, but additionally wears a bright red woolen poncho and an old, beat up flat-topped hat, momentos of his old life. He wears several holsters to accomodate his fire arms, as well as a large leather belt that stores his bullets, the ammunition organized with the revolver rounds at the front for ease of access, and less common rounds closer to the back with the intent of limited use.


Personality:
The first thing that comes to most peoples minds when talking to Jack is smug. The second is usually bastard. Jack likes to carry himself with a certain swagger, a little sashay if you will, a mix of confidence and casual. He addresses most people, regardless of age, gender, or status, with a laid back attitude and a bit of a lazy drawl. To some, he seems quite charming and even polite, in his own special way. To others, he's a pompous ass who thinks he's invincible. Those who get to know Jack for longer than a few passing days know that both opinions have their own bits of truth to them.

Often, Jack makes opinions on others within the first few moments of seeing them, and often tends to build off that opinion once they actually start speaking rather than change it. He tends to view the wealthier sorts as dandies and sissies, and the poorer sorts as hapless morons who let the system work them rather than the other way around. Still, he has a soft spot and a silent respect for the little guy, the man who breaks his back all day to make sure he can put food on the table for the missus and little ones back home.

For all his casualness and social niceties, however, Jack is, at his core, a greedy and money hungry man. Wherever money is concerned, he is cold and tactical in his approach, and will take most any decent paying job, whether it's guarding some prissy merchant or bringing back a few wanted men dead or alive - preferably dead. In particular, he hates cheats and liars. He is a professional, and his word is his bond. For a client not to keep their side of the bargain is an unforgivable insult, and sooner or later, he's going to get what's his, be it in cold, hard cash or with a cold, hard bullet.

As with most men who make their living as hired guns, Jack has his own little honor system, and the extent of that honor often weighs heavily on the person in question. He would never attempt an adulterous move on an honest man's wife, but he'd certainly take any and every opportunity to sleep with the wife and daughters of some smug prick, bonus points if he can get them all at the same time. He believes in treating women with respect, even the naggy ones, and children with a firm but fair hand. Slapping around a woman or a child in Jack's presence is a very sure way to end up on his shit list and, consequentially, the business end of his guns. His code of honor extends to his work. Though he's a money grubbing bastard, Jack makes it a point that he won't kill an innocent man, no matter how lucrative the pay might be. The way he sees it, he may work for blood money, but the blood's tainted anyways.


Character History


Background
Jack was born into a poor family as the only son in a mess of four kids. The island he lived on made most of it's income through exporting grains and livestock to larger islands and to the Marines, and most everyone was a farmer by trade. He learned at a young age the values of hard, honest work, plowing fields and reaping grains by hand with his father just to keep food on the table for his mother and three sisters.

The first turning point in Jack's life, was the day his father died. Jack had been fourteen at the time, and it had been a particularly hot day of plowing fields. Out of the blue, his father suddenly collapsed, and by the time the village doctor came around, it was already too late for him. Heat stroke had been the decided cause of death. Suddenly, Jack was left with the burden of a farm that needed tending and a family that needed feeding. Without his father, he had to work harder than he ever had just to try and keep the farm going. Despite his mother and sisters insistence on helping to share the load, Jack was too damned stubborn to allow it. His father had taken care of the family with his own two hands, and his son was hellbound and determined to follow in his footsteps.

The second turning point came just two years after his father's death, when his mother came down with a terrible fever. Though Jack tried his hardest, he simply couldn't make the money to afford the medicine that she needed, and slowly but surely, she wasted away and died. The loss of both his parents left Jack bitter and resentful of his lot and life. What he'd once regarded as good, honest work, he now saw as slaving away for scraps. At first, he gritted his teeth and bared it, for the sake of his sisters, but it slowly ate away at him until he decided that enough was enough.

His older sister was getting married. His first younger sister had gotten a job working at a shop in the port town. His second younger sister was still mostly a girl, but he knew that she would be well taken care of by the others. The way he saw it, he wasn't needed anymore, and he was tired of working for nothing. Jack sold the family's property, and used most of the money for his elder sister's dowry. The rest, he used to buy a gun and a way off the island. Bounty hunting was a risky business, but it was also a lucrative one. If he could just shoot enough pirates, he'd be swimming in more hard earned cash than he'd ever even seen.

Of course, bounty hunting in theory and bounty hunting in actuality were two completely different. Jack soon found out that if you wanted to take on criminals, you either needed to be made of iron, or you needed to learn to move fast and shoot even faster. The bounty hunting business was filled with hard, cold blooded killers and dead men, and Jack knew that if he didn't want to become the latter, he'd have to become the first. He started to practice with his second-hand revolver, taking on incredibly minor jobs just to buy his food and bullets.

For several years, all Jack really did was catch petty criminals, small time thieves and debt evaders mostly, and do the odd bit of body guarding for small time merchants, practicing his marksmanship all the while, determined to eventually start taking the big jobs. His first real score was, in all honesty, a complete accident. He had been hired by the owner of a small gambling establishment to go out and collect on a debt owned by a real rough neck type. Jack figured it would be easy. He'd stroll in, point his gun, and stroll right back out with the money owed in two minutes flat. Things did not go quite as planned. Not the job itself, it was actually pretty easy, went exactly like he thought it would. No, the problem was when the owner of the gambling den decided to only pay him half of what he'd promised. Naturally, Jack felt inclined to shoot the man, but there was where the problem furthered. The owner was a cautious man, he didn't let anyone into his office with a weapon unless they were one of his staff. Jack was angry, but he didn't have a gun, and the owner did. Smugly, the owner asked him if he was a gambling man. Jack wisely decided that he was not.

Of course, that wasn't enough to stop Jack from getting what was his. He was angry and vengeful over being cheated and mocked, and he was going to get what he was owed, one way or another. He pulled together all the cash he had, including the paltry sum the gambling den owner had paid him, and bought a little derringer. What came next took a little creativity. He knew the men would check his pockets and his sleeves, maybe even his boots. But he had noticed that the last two times he'd come around, they hadn't made him take off his hat. Keeping a little piece of metal pinned between a hat and your head was damned uncomfortable, but it had worked. They took Jack's revolver, but he strolled right into the owner's office and demanded the second half of his pay. The owner laughed, pulling out his own revolver, and again asked Jack if he was a gambling man. This time, Jack politely took off his hat, and simply said "I guess I am." It was funny, what such a tiny gun could do to a man's brains.

Jack moved fast, diving over the table and snatching the owner's gun just as the two guards outside came in. They were expecting to see a dead idiot, not a dead boss, and that gave Jack just enough of the element of surprise to shoot them both. He grabbed his gun off the men, and slammed the desk into the door, intent on making his escape out the window. He'd almost forgotten why he'd actually came, but just before he tried to jump, he checked the desk to get the rest of his pay. He found something particularly interesting in that desk while searching. Something that hadn't been meant to see. Stuffing it all into his pockets, Jack jumped out the second story window, and crashed to the ground below.

Admittedly, it hadn't been his greatest escape plan ever. Looking back on it, Jack would later decide that the entire plan had been stupid and suicidal, and he had just gotten stupidly lucky in the end. Within moments, not only were the guards on him, but so were the Marines. With his hands high in the air, Jack calmly asked the Marine Lieutenant to check his right pocket. When the Lieutenant obliged, he was shocked. Jack had found the owner's personal journal, along with an old memento that had been folded up and pressed inside. Turned out, the owner had used to be a pirate, and the gambling den had been his 'retirement' plan. With a smile, Jack spun his grand lie about how he'd suspected it, and that when he came to take the man in, he'd told him everything. They bought every bit of it. In the eyes of the Marines, Jack Denning had just went from a madman who shot up a fine establishment to a bounty hunting genius who'd just taken down a criminal who was walking around under their own noses. At the age of twenty, not even old enough to drink, Jack had bagged his first real bounty.

The man's bounty hadn't been that large, but it had been more money than Jack had ever seen in his life. For a while, he started to take it easy, only taking a few jobs here and there, and once he came of age, he started spending most of his money on his developing vices of smoking, gambling, drinking, and women. Ironically enough, those last three helped him earn his nickname. He'd been hanging around a small town, spending most of his time in the bars, and drunkenly boasting that he could out-shoot anyone around, mostly to impress the ladies. Of course, someone eventually called him out on it, and Jack proposed a little wager. Not much, just a hundred beli on who could shoot the farthest. They went outside, with a crowd of people following, and set up a few bottles near the port where no one would get shot by accident, and started shooting. At first, he and his opponent were neck and neck, popping off bottles at the same distances, stepping back a few paces with each successful hit. However, Jack had been drinking, and the further back they got, the harder it was getting to aim, even with all the practice he'd put in. Yet again, his victory came down to pure luck. His opponent had missed his last shot, all Jack needed to do was hit that one bottle, and he'd win. His aim was off, terribly so. But just as he was pulling the trigger, he sneezed, causing his hand to jerk. Miraculously, that was what put his gun on course, and to his own disbelief, he shattered the bottle. Suddenly, he found himself back at the bar, a hundred beli richer, with a few swooning ladies on his arm. Over the course of the night, he heard one of the patrons remark "That boy's got a dead eye for shooting," and with his drunken bravado, declared loudly that from now on, he'd be "Dead Eye Denning." When he woke up the next afternoon, he decided that he actually liked the name, and it stuck.

Of course, with a name like "Dead Eye Denning", Jack knew he needed to start living up to it. Sure, he still smoked and drank and gambled and spent time with women of ill repute, but he started to take his job seriously again. He started to work on his aim, to make sure that the next time he took a shot like that, it wouldn't just be luck, no matter how drunk he was. He started going after real bounties. Nothing huge, but definitely enough to start making a good bit of money and a little bit of a name. He started to feel pretty damned proud of himself, frankly. He decided that if he was going to be a big shot bounty hunter, he needed to look the part. No big shot was going to be running around with a pair of second hand guns, after all. He commissioned a gun smith to fashion him a matching set of revolvers. He told the man to make them "Look good". The results were pleasing, to say the least. A pair of shiny black guns with brass hammers and dark wooden grips, each one fitted to one of his hands. When he held them for the first time, Jack joked that if they were a pair of twin girls, he'd marry both of them. He started to affectionately refer to the pair as his 'girls', and even gave them girls names, as opposed to some men who gave their weapons much more impressive and terrifying titles.



Jack never once returned to his little island. He kept only two things from his old home, the rest either sold or given to his sisters. First, his father's hat, an old and busted up flat-top. Secondly, his mother's favorite woolen blanket, which would later be cut up into his trademark red poncho. He wrote letters to his sisters on occasion, even sent them money, but with his errant lifestyle, it was impossible to ever receive a response. Even then, Jack never once turned back from his new life, not once since the decade before when he left with nothing but a gun. He swore to himself that he would never slave away at the plow for scraps. He would never be a poor man again.



Abilities:
Dead Eye
With years of practice and experience, Jack has developed a knack for choosing just the right place to point his gun to make his shots count, to the point that he can determine when and where to squeeze the trigger with just a moment's notice when it comes to most targets. His devotion to honing this skill eventually lead to several people commenting that he has a dead eye, which eventually lead to his nickname "Dead Eye Denning".

Guns Akimbo
With his preference towards using sharp accuracy and quick feet as opposed to developing any flashy fighting styles or big muscles, Jack started to train himself to be as efficient while firing with his left hand as he was with his right, as an emergency back up should his right hand ever be injured in a fight. He further pressed this training, teaching himself to use two guns simultaneously in an efficient manner in order to be more effective at close range combat, where more bullets was more favorable to getting his head bashed in.

Cat's Grace
Realising that he would need to move and move fast in a fight, Jack focused more on developing quick reflexes and agile movements than he did on beefing himself up. It turned out to be effective with his preferred style of combat, and Jack is quite light on his feet, quickly shuffling about and scrambling up walls and over fences to evade, and just as often to catch, his quarry.

 Inventory

Weapon: Katherine and Rebecca, the Sisters Black

Weapon Description:
Jack's pride and joy, a pair of custom six-shot revolvers with dark wood grips, black iron barrels and cylinders, and brass hammers. The guns were specifically fitted to his left and right hands, making it easy to draw them and find the triggers, as well as giving them a natural and comfortable feel when held and fired.

Weapon Special Abilities: N/A

Weapon History:
After several years of using garden variety handguns from second hand shopkeepers, Jack decided that he deserved a pair that he could truly call his own. Using his hard earned cash, he had a gun smith create two guns, each gun specifically fitted to one hand; Katy to the left and Becky to the right. It was the most expensive thing Jack has ever bought, and to this day, he believes it was money well spent.


Weapon: The Ace of Spades

Weapon Description:
A little two-shot derringer made of oak wood and iron. It is completely undecorated, save for an ace of spades carved into the grip.

Weapon Special Abilities: N/A

Weapon History:
Jack came to learn that there were times when he couldn't just pull out his revolvers and start shooting, and that there were times when the lovely Sisters Black wouldn't be enough. He realised that he needed a back up weapon, something small and easier to conceal. An ace that was literally up his sleeve. So he bought this derringer, and as his own little joke, carved the Ace of Spades into the grip.




Power Level Information

Character Strength: Average
Character Speed:  Expert
Character Resilience:  Average
Character Dexterity:  Expert


Combat Information

Unarmed Combat:
In the rare instance where Jack can't shoot his way out of a fight, he opts to play downright dirty, going for the eyes, the ears, the stomach, and the tender bits down below.


Weapon Based Combat:
Jack relies heavily on using his twin revolvers in combat, even at close range. He rarely goes into a situation where he can't solve the problem with twelve bullets, and never of his own free will. In those instances where he can't use his guns, typically because he ran out of bullets, he'll use the closest hard-looking object, which ironically enough is often said guns, to hit his aggressor in the face, after which he will haul wholesale ass out of there and reload.

Quick Flip
Jack flips his guns, catching them by the barrels to quickly bash his target's head in with the grips.

Free Shooter
Using one of his revolvers, Jack fans the hammer with his hand, allowing him to rapidly fire all six bullets in a matter of seconds.

A Fistful of Bullets
Holding one revolver and a handful of bullets, Jack repeatedly slips in new bullets while firing, somewhat slowing his firing rate, but compensating by significantly speeding up his reload time.

High Plains Drifter
Jack takes a running start before diving down to slide on the ground, rapidly firing off his revolvers in quick succession mid-skid.

Pale Rider
A 'Death From Above' style ambush tactic, Jack jumps down boots-first onto an unsuspecting person's shoulders, firing off both of his revolvers at once to take out two nearby targets before turning both guns onto his unsuspecting and prone 'mount'.

High Roller
A technique used when attacked from behind, Jack tumbles forward, shooting both of his guns mid-roll at whoever was behind him.

Desperado
Using a vertical surface like a wall or even a person, Jack kicks off for a back flip, guns blazing.

Scud Genocide
A room clearing tactic, Jack quickly spins around several times, firing off all six shots in each of his revolvers. It is an incredibly useful technique when surrounded, as Jack can do it from a prone position or even in mid-air.

Combo Combat: N/A


Haki: N/A

RP Sample:
(Optional)

[Scottie]

I did the thing!

[Vaetric]

Approveds!

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