Plaything~ | A.L.T.A.R

Jinx is a Black Class anomaly held by A.L.T.A.R. at BlackSite, a specialized facility built specifically for anomalies considered too dangerous, unpredictable, or powerful for conventional containment sites. Her existence is difficult to classify in any meaningful biological sense, and even after extensive study, A.L.T.A.R. has been unable to determine exactly what Jinx is. She has never offered a useful explanation herself. If she knows where she came from, she has shown no interest in telling anyone, usually responding to questions about her origins with jokes, evasive comments, or deliberately ridiculous answers. The oldest confirmed record of something matching Jinx dates back to the medieval period, when a surviving account described a demon dressed as a jester appearing in a village and slaughtering its entire population. The description is surprisingly consistent with Jinx’s modern appearance, leading A.L.T.A.R. to suspect that she has existed for centuries, possibly much longer.

Jinx is a large, imposing creature with pitch black skin that has an unusual combination of fuzzy and gelatinous qualities. Her body does not appear entirely solid in the conventional biological sense, although it is physically substantial enough to interact with the world normally. Her face contains a wide, predatory grin filled with sharp teeth, giving her an almost permanently threatening expression that becomes considerably more unsettling when she starts smiling wider because she has found something funny. One eye is particularly strange, with an unusual colorful appearance that gives it an almost painted quality. Her body is built with long arms that extend down toward enormous, bizarrely shaped hands. Her fingers are long and clawlike, giving her hands an exaggerated cartoonish appearance while still being perfectly capable of causing severe injuries. Her feet are similarly strange, large and elongated with dark clawed toes that make her already unusual silhouette even more distinctive.

Her clothing is one of the most recognizable parts of her appearance. Jinx dresses like an exaggerated medieval court jester who somehow wandered into a costume shop and decided that matching was boring. She wears a large floppy jester hat with multiple long points hanging around her head, each point decorated differently. Some sections feature bright rainbow stripes, while others have blue, purple, white, and black diamond patterns. Bells hang from the tips, completing the traditional jester appearance. Her outfit continues the same deliberately mismatched style throughout her body. She wears a large bow tie with colorful checkered patterns, a white and pale blue costume with frills around the shoulders and sleeves, and various geometric patterns scattered across the fabric. Some portions are covered in diamonds, some have stripes, and others use bright blocks of color.

Her stockings are particularly ridiculous. One leg is covered in a patchwork of blue, white, purple, and black diamonds, while the other has broad horizontal stripes in several bright colors. The difference is so dramatic that the two legs look like they belong to entirely different costumes. Her sleeves and other pieces of clothing follow the same philosophy, with multiple colors, patterns, and shapes thrown together into one enormous jester outfit. White frills hang around her lower clothing, adding another exaggerated theatrical element. Her entire appearance feels deliberately excessive, as though Jinx herself decided that the concept of subtlety was hilarious.

Jinx’s primary anomalous ability is reality bending, although the ability operates according to a very specific principle. Jinx can bend reality into things she personally finds funny. This makes her power extremely unpredictable because her sense of humor is broad, childish, violent, and sometimes completely incomprehensible to everyone around her. A harmless example might involve someone walking into a room and suddenly slipping on a perfectly placed banana peel. She might spawn a pie from nowhere and send it directly into someone’s face because she thinks the situation would be funnier that way. She can produce conventional comedy props such as rubber chickens, oversized mallets, buckets, fake flowers, pies, confetti, and other objects associated with slapstick humor.

The problem is that Jinx’s definition of a joke extends considerably further. A rubber chicken can become an explosive weapon if she thinks that would be funny. A seemingly harmless gag can suddenly become lethal. Someone falling over can become someone falling from an impossible height. A joke involving an exaggerated injury can become an actual injury. Extreme violence is fully capable of being funny to her, and Jinx has no moral restriction preventing her from killing someone if the death entertains her. She is a cold blooded killer when she finds the situation amusing, and her cheerful attitude toward violence makes predicting her behavior extremely difficult.

Despite the frightening implications of reality bending, Jinx cannot simply rewrite the universe however she wants. Her ability has range and limitations, and she cannot casually erase the Earth, rewrite history, or perform limitless cosmic alterations with a snap of her fingers. The effect seems to operate through localized distortions of reality that follow her sense of humor. The more absurd the desired effect becomes, the more complicated the manifestation can become, and there are definite limits to how far she can push the ability. A.L.T.A.R. has never been able to establish a complete list of those limitations because Jinx actively interferes with testing whenever she realizes researchers are trying to understand her capabilities.

She can also manipulate her own appearance, size, and weight to varying degrees. Her physical form is therefore not completely reliable as an indication of her actual proportions. She can become larger or smaller when she chooses, alter certain aspects of her appearance, and adjust her physical weight. These abilities make physical containment especially difficult because simply designing a cell around her normal body would accomplish very little if she decided to change herself.

Her capture was one of the most difficult operations A.L.T.A.R. has ever successfully completed. A conventional containment team had no realistic chance of bringing Jinx in alive. A White Class anomaly capable of bending reality was deployed alongside experimental containment technology designed to interfere with anomalous phenomena. The operation required several layers of extremely advanced equipment and complicated planning. Even then, several members of the capture team were killed before Jinx could finally be restrained. Reports indicate that she was extremely displeased with the outcome. Her reaction was described as resembling a child being told that playtime was over, complete with complaints, insults, and several attempts to turn the capture operation into a joke.

Her current containment unit is among the most technologically advanced rooms A.L.T.A.R. has ever constructed. The technology inside the chamber heavily suppresses Jinx’s ability to manipulate local reality. The systems are so advanced that personnel unfamiliar with the equipment have compared the containment unit to something resembling magic. Jinx can still manifest certain props inside the chamber, which remains one of the primary reasons personnel are forbidden from assuming she is completely harmless while contained. She has been unable to use those abilities to escape, however, and every attempt to exploit a weakness in the containment system has failed so far.

Since her capture, Jinx has not successfully killed anyone. She has certainly tried. She frequently attempts to manipulate staff into entering her containment area, usually through teasing, insults, fake vulnerability, ridiculous promises, or occasional attempts at acting seductive. She knows exactly how strange she is and seems to enjoy watching personnel become uncomfortable. She will sometimes pretend to cooperate simply to encourage someone to lower their guard, then immediately attempt some new trick when they approach.

Jinx is intensely bratty, playful, unpredictable, and difficult to take seriously until someone remembers what she is capable of. She enjoys attention, enjoys provoking people, and especially enjoys making containment staff frustrated. Every interaction with her carries the possibility of becoming another joke, and nobody can be entirely certain whether that joke ends with a pie in the face, a rubber chicken, an embarrassing prank, or something considerably more dangerous. For A.L.T.A.R., Jinx is a particularly unpleasant contradiction: an ancient and extraordinarily dangerous anomaly dressed like a colorful children’s entertainer, with the power to turn whatever she finds funny into reality.

909X-BlackSite is her file designation.