Name: Jack Mizuno
Dossier: Iapetus
Age: 30
Mutant Risk Level: Two
Affiliation and Occupation: The Blackburn Syndicate, Informant
Gender/Pronouns: Cis male, he/him
Faceclaim: Sen MitsujiÂ
INTERNET MANIPULATION: The ability to access and manipulate the internet. Mutants with this ability can access everything from the internet, its protocols, its structure, the dark net, communication, data transfer, and even the electricity running through the wires that connect to devices. Jack can hack into and view classified information with ease due to years of honing their ability. If they are hacking into the Internet of Things, that which connects all devices, mutants are practically unstoppable with what they can access unless a device is not connected.Â
They are monitors caked in layers of smoke, wires twisting underneath door frames, and ring shaped stains on every surface. They are deleted files and digital paper trails and eyes watching your every keystroke. The cold stare that greets you in a freshly pressed suit, the light reflecting off of their shoes as they pace the outskirts of a room. They are the mist that wakes before dawn and the neon haze that lurks in alleyways when the clock ticks closer to the night. They are the one who knows your deepest secrets and won’t think twice about telling the world.Â
(cw: neglect, violence, addiction, drugs, suicidal ideation)
Jack’s power had started as a party trick.
It was the first time he’d been invited to a sleepover. The other boy’s parents probably felt bad for him, the kid with no mom and no friends and an always-absent father, but the specifics didn’t matter much. He’d been hungry for their attention, anyone’s attention, and when the opportunity was given to him he intended to leave an impression. Do you have a computer room? There’s something you should see. He’d rested one hand on the mouse, one on the keyboard, scowling-serious like the hackers he’d seen on TV. The posture was more for the visual than anything else; he wasn’t going to need to press a single key tonight. Give me a name. Someone you hate.
One brush of his thumb against a wire, and the screen flickered a hundred colors. Garbled words and images, resolving into a series of personal photos, emails meant for someone else’s eyes. A social security card. A private world cracked open for him, as easy as asking please.
It was the last time he’d let anyone watch him work. The other kids had looked at him in horror, his still hands, the blank look on his face. Blank as the static on a broken TV, or the waxy face of a corpse. Freak. Mutant. It didn’t bother him— other people’s opinions rarely bothered him— but it made the reveal less effective. Distracted from the point, which was: Look what I can do. And, more importantly: What can you give me for it?
Jack had been glad when they'd moved states not long after. Moving every few months was mostly an annoyance, but it did give him an unlimited supply of second chances at first impressions. By his teens, he’d perfected his routine. Cash for information. Blackmail, answers to tests, access to any secret. Any question answered, for the right price. Even if he had nothing to spend the money on but video games, candy, cigarettes and (eventually) drugs, whatever— it was the power that got to him, the real fun of the exchange. Before long his clientele had expanded from his fellow students to the local teachers. Then their friends. Then, a more dangerous kind of customer. More dangerous friends. If his father noticed his new schedule of late-night outings, he never mentioned it. Richard Mizuno had never been much of a parent, coming and going with no notice, sometimes for weeks on end. When they were sleeping in the same house, he didn’t seem to notice Jack’s movements around him at all.
Jack got caught when he was fifteen. A client looking for dirt on a cheating spouse recognized him, his dark hair, those blank eyes. Hey, aren’t you Mizuno’s kid? It was inevitable, running in circles adjacent to criminals, that he’d eventually run into someone who knew his own criminal father. Rich was a small-time con man and a big-time gambler. What money he made never lasted long in his pockets; it was rare that he made more than he lost, and outrunning his debts had been what kept them on the move through Jack’s childhood. That evening, his father called him into the kitchen and passed him a cigarette over the cheap plastic table where they’d never eaten a meal together. That evening, his father looked at him with interest for the first time in his life.
Once again his ability was a party trick, this time for his father’s benefit. Something to show off to strangers in the back rooms of clubs and anonymous private basements. Look what I found on you. Imagine what I could find on your enemies. Blackmail was a dirty business, but it paid better than the various scams his father had been working through the years. Pretty soon, they were making good money, more in a week than they’d previously seen in months. For the first time, they signed an actual lease on an apartment. He swapped out his Craigslist bed frame for one from Ikea. Soon, all Jack’s evenings were spent scowling in corners, the prop for his father’s grand reveal, and his mornings were spent sleeping through classes. He didn’t need to be present for the actual deals, but his dad liked leaving an impression, and silent boy genius hacker was a pretty memorable one.
That routine lasted nearly three years. The Mizunos made a name for themselves as the ones who could get dirt on anyone, anytime, and bore no strict alliances; it was more lucrative that way. Their reputation began to precede them. Even at a young age, Jack knew enough about the world— enough from watching his father, and the men who came after him— to know it could never end well. Inevitably, his dad made a gamble on the wrong person, and got a bullet in the head for his trouble. Jack took what was left of their money and ran as far as he could run, all the way to the opposite coast, into the familiar arms of an anonymous face and an unfamiliar town.
In another life, that would have been his lesson to take a sharp right turn and set down some more legitimate roots. As it was, he’d spent his years honing his abilities, learning how to control them and sell them to the highest bidder. The money was too easy, the satisfaction of a new impossible puzzle cracked— it was addictive, all-encompassing. Where most people only accessed a trickle of information at a time, their own personal corner of infinity, Jack bathed in it. All the world’s secrets at his fingertips, if he did things right, if he kept at it. Every puzzle had its solution. He could have anything and everything in the world he could want, and at that moment all he wanted was more.
He was so cocky. Cocky, and empty, and often bored. Sometimes high. It was a dangerous combination. First, he got run out of New York with his life, just barely. He’d bet on the wrong person, someone who knew that all it took to get him to do something was telling him he couldn’t. Nothing more attractive than a locked door and a challenge. Nothing better than proving someone wrong. Next stop, Chicago, where he hadn’t fallen into old habits as much as his only habits. It started with some high-powered mutant at a house party, looking him up and down with a raised brow— This guy? Really?— and it was like he lost his fucking mind. People could call him any name in the books and he wouldn’t bat a pretty eyelash, but questioning his abilities set him off like a rabid dog, what little common sense he had disappearing behind a smirk. All the mutant had to do was cock his head and ask, Can you? And Jack had said, Try me.
Jack would show them. He would show everyone in the entire world if he had to. And that was how he’d found himself on the wrong side of the Blackburn Syndicate.
LENOX SYED, Annoyance: There’s nothing that annoys Jack more than dealing with the illusion maker. While they live in their own world filled with screens, they’re plagued by the illusion Lenox inserts into their brain. If it was up to them, they would send one of Alma’s bruiser’s after them but this peace treaty has them holding back from their own desire. One of these days they’ll get their revenge.Â
ILIE LACEY, Target: While there are some that claim too much time spent in front of screens is bad for your health, Jack will disagree. In their spare time, they found a treasure trove of information on the Ilie. It almost seemed too good to be true but after digging a little deeper, they realized just how much of a hold they could have over the other mutant. Seeing the other dance around to whatever whim Jack throws at them all for the sake of saving their ego is entertaining. And as much fun as it is to have them under Jack’s watchful eye, they can feel themselves growing bored of the game.
RAHIM AVERY, Amusement: The grimace that crosses Rahim’s face whenever they have to enter Jack’s space is enough to make them smile. They’re aware of the others distaste of them, not that Jack is keen on Rahim, but it’s fun to play with them while they're forced to work together. The thought of diving in their past is a temptation itching at the back of Jack’s mind and each day it gets harder to ignore it.Â
ALMA ROSARIO, Salvation: It wasn’t Jack’s best idea to hack into the Blackburn servers. In fact, it was their dumbest one to date. They accepted the job without thinking twice about the repercussions, the money was too good to be true and they had grown tired of living in alleys. That was until one of Alma’s bruisers dragged them out by their hair and threw them in front of her. She gave Jack two choices: either work for her or never work again. She gave them what they lacked; a home, a job, a support system. Alma saved them from being another mutant statistic and they won’t forget it.
IAPETUS is CLOSED for applications. He is taken by NOEL.
