Emancipated and Quite Capable

To go by the dance the day before, half of creation had come back to the island for the weekend. Jack decided to ignore the paranoid edge niggling at him about how that was just asking for the island to get into one of its nastier moods in favor of getting a nice breakfast together. Ronan was staying for the weekend, as was Emma (of course), and he suspected there might be a former housemate or two who would want to stop by for the sake of nostalgia.

So he went to J,GOB's early that morning and bought a nice breakfast spread -- a few dozen bagels, cream cheese, smoked salmon and other fixings, plus a dozen assorted muffins for anyone who didn't appreciate the nirvana that was a really good bagel. He brewed a large pot of coffee and settled in with a poppyseed bagel liberally piled with salmon. Even if no one else showed up, this was an entirely civilized way to start a Sunday.

[OOC: Open to anybody staying in the house or anybody inclined to visit.]

Jack had physically recovered by the time he stumbled out of bed this morning, but it would take longer to get the screams of dying unicorns out of his mind and the taste of human blood out of his mouth. That's Karla's world, he thought. Always a new adventure. He was glad to know he could force a transformation if he needed to -- but he still wasn't entirely comfortable with what the wolf had done.

He stumbled down the steps and flicked on the TV, clicking through channels at random until he found a movie that promised explosions, breasts, and very little need for thought.

From the kitchen, he heard an unfamiliar young man's voice.

I'm a punk rock prom queen, brown paper magazine....

He stirred from the couch for just long enough to ascertain there was no invader and the singer was the same kind of vision that had been plaguing everyone for weeks, then sank back into his seat.

That was the island for him. It was never going to let him rest.

[OOC: Open to roomies, visitors, or phone calls!]

One of the many problems with having triplets, Jack thought, was that even when you had every reason to sleep late your body wouldn't let you. Seven years of 6 a.m. wake-up calls did that to a man.

He didn't recognize the room at first and was disoriented for a moment when he woke up, but recovered quickly. Emma wasn't next to him; she must have taken her old room out of some nostalgia. He supposed it was good that at least one of them was getting some extra sleep.

He showered quickly, dressed, and went down the stairs. It was pleasing to see the coffee-maker and bread for toast were still where they'd been when he lived in this house. He hummed to himself absently as he started putting breakfast together, wondering who else might have come into town for the reunion.

[OOC: Open for housemates with some SP!]

Jack woke up on the couch in the living room, and was immediately struck by a crick in his neck that was shortly followed by overwhelming gratitude that he wasn't fourteen any more. Not that he'd even been such a bad sort of 14-year-old, but he associated the age with a kind of powerlessness he was glad to have outgrown.

And, also, it was nice to not be half-convinced the television was some sort of witchcraft. So there was that.

He sent a quick text to Emma to let her know there was no need to start chasing Sebastien down, then went into the kitchen. He rarely cooked much, but he was hungry, there was a box of blueberry muffin mix that had been in the cabinets for months and being back to himself seemed like as good a reason to celebrate by making it as any. Especially as it was too early to drink.

If it occurred to him some muffins might make a decent 'sorry I was a bit insufferable' present for a housemate who seemed to have been an exceptionally sulky teen himself ... well, that factored into it too.

[OOC: Open for weekend SP.]

There were certain advantages to having been on the island for most of three years.

For example, when one woke up and saw a woman looking back from the mirror over one's dresser, the experienced male Fandomite who'd been through this twice before did not shriek -- or at least, he didn't if he was Jack.

Instead, Jack permitted himself one streak of swearing, then took a picture of his new ... assets to send to Emma to tease her. Then he pulled on a t-shirt and yoga pants Emma had forgotten when she moved back to school, twisted his hair into a knot, and padded into a kitchen to start the pot of coffee.

He wondered if he ought to wake Kaidan and Ronan to warn them, but decided against it. A sudden switch in genders was really the sort of thing you had to discover on your own.

[OOC: Open for housemates or visitors! Possible SP due to usual weekend nonsense.]

To the casual observer, it might look like Jack was beating the fuck out of a punching bag some long-ago tenant had hung in a dusty corner of the basement. The casual observer would be right -- though Jack did have his reasons.

His day had started bad. His definition of bad these days involved waking up naked in the preserve, half a mile from his clothes and with a gash on his shoulder where something the wolf had tried to turn into dinner had taken a bite out of him instead.

Jack had a dim feeling he'd won in the end, but that didn't really make things any better.

Even once he was half civilized -- teeth brushed, dressed, full of coffee and ibuprofin, and profoundly grateful there was only one day left until he was back to sanity for the rest of the month -- his day did not much improve. He'd been working through memoirs written by thamaturgists of his world, in the dim hopes one of them would throw in an offhand and by the way, this is the secret cure for lycanthropy. The current one was by a Dr. Damian Thomas, and it was as frustrating as all the rest. Dr. Thomas was writing in the '80s; he was more interested in gossip about which celebrities were homosexual or wampyr than about actually discussing his work. But he'd apparently been well-respected at one point, so Jack dutifully trudged through a chapter discussing Thomas's work in founding the first school of magic in New Amsterdam.

And then Jack came to the passage, with accompanying pen-and-ink portrait, that sent him to the basement.

And what shall I say of the fifth of the founders?, Thomas had written coyly next to the sketch of a hollowed face Jack had once known as well as his own. He is so well-known that any discussion seems superfluous, and he's long since had his fill of publicity. Out of respect for his wishes, I will say only that he was deeply kind, that his money saw the university through some very rough times, and that his students are all better people for having known him. I speak, of course, of the notorious wampyr who introduced himself to me as Jack Prior, though he's had many names...

So Sebastien was in New Amsterdam, or had been fifty years ago. That wasn't a surprise, and didn't bother Jack in the least. But knowing his guardian been using Jack's name, as if he was dead and had no further use for it --

It was a good thing the punching bag was there.

[OOC: Open if you live in the house, or for phone calls/texts/etc. from others. Inspired by ad eternum by Elizabeth Bear.]