Jack Noir


 * This article is about the pre-Scratch kids' Jack Noir. For the post-Scratch trolls' version, see Spades Slick. For the post-Scratch kids' version, see Jack Noir (post-scratch).

Jack Noir is an Agent of Derse who appears in every session of Sburb. He oversees various affairs of the kingdom and does all of the most important and most tedious paperwork, and is the direct subordinate of the King and Queen. In the kids' session, he slew the Queen, and soon after, the King, declaring himself as the Sovereign Slayer and wreaking havoc on the Medium. Karkat has identified him as the "cancer" he created in the kids' session.

A "Jack" is a face card in a normal deck of cards that ranks below the king and queen, and "Noir" is a pun on the detective film genre film noir, an allusion to Problem Sleuth, and Jack's alternate universe counterpart. "Noir" also means "black" in French, making his full name a pun on the card game Blackjack. (Resemblance to the name Jack Black is just an amusing coincidence.) Bec Noir, the name given to Jack's fully prototyped form, is possibly a play on the French phrase bête noire, meaning "black beast" literally, or used as slang for a pet peeve or something feared obsessively.

Biography
When he was introduced, Jack appeared to be a normal-looking Dersite wearing a multi-colored jacket with a spade. He particularly despised wearing his jester's hat. Jack Noir was also seen without his outfit on after it appeared to be affected by Rose Lalonde's Prototyping involving the Eldritch Princess, giving it a pink frilly skirt and a hat similar to that of the princess.

Jack finally became so fed up with the ridiculous costumes that he utilized an object in Jade and Jake's present to John (perhaps the Royal Deringer) to kill the Black Queen, taking the ring for himself and ascending to the throne.

Jack Noir is the first major character beyond the four protagonists who the player attempts to name.

Derse
Jack's role in Derse is to make use of several window-shaped monitors—or Fenestrated Walls. He has three such walls. The fourth wall was stolen, possibly by Grandpa (ending up as the "odd device" in Jade's bedroom) or Andrew Hussie (ending up in Andrew's study).

Jack can watch events anywhere in the Incipisphere. He views the victories of John and his father over his minions. He seems to consider the monsters they face 'graveyard stuffers'—though, since they're the weakest known Underlings, he's probably right. He is also responsible for keeping prisoners of Derse from escaping, though neither he nor his guards (including the Hegemonic Brute) were able to stop Dad and his massive amount of Mangrit. Dad eventually reaches Jack, and then burns, stomps, and applies shaving creams to Jack's comical hat, after which, Jack heartily sets him free.

He later finds the Parcel Mistress attempting to retrieve the green package. Too lazy to process the paperwork, he instead offers the package in exchange for the white crowns. He gives her a Regisword, incorrectly assuming that she will achieve this by killing the bearers.

His subordinate Agents include the Draconian Dignitary, the Courtyard Droll and the Hegemonic Brute. They continue to serve him after he becomes the Sovereign Slayer (as do their counterparts in the trolls' session, who become the other members of the Midnight Crew).

Prototypings
Jack took on the physical prototypings from the kids' session after he killed the Black Queen and put on her ring. The first three prototypings were already present and visible on the queen when he took the ring. First was John Egbert's (carried out by Rose Lalonde, his server player). John's kernelsprite was prototyped with a harlequin with an arm missing, a slashed eye, and a piece of his comical hat cut off. This caused the Black and White kings and queens (and eventually Jack) to have a slashed eye, missing arm and a missing piece of their comical hat.

Rose prototyped her kernelsprite twice before entering the medium, first with the body of her cat Jaspers and second with an "improved" princess doll that had been given Horrorterror-like tentacles (the latter carried out by Dave Strider). These prototypings caused the kings and queens (and eventually Jack) to grow two long, prehensile tentacles and added princess flourishes to their outfits.

Dave's prototyping (carried out by Jade Harley) used a dead crow, accidentally skewered by one of Dave's cheap-piece-of-shit swords. The kings and queens, and eventually Jack, grew large wings capable of interplanetary flight, and became (harmlessly) skewered by a sword, which they could remove and use as a weapon after this prototyping.

The final prototyping occurred after Jack donned the ring, while Jade was preparing to enter the medium. Bec teleports everything near the kernel into space and prototypes himself. Jack loses his comical hat and tentacles, and his head loses its catlike features and takes on the emblematic "devilbeast" shape of Bec's head. He keeps the single arm, sword, and scar through one eye. It appears that with this prototyping Jack also acquired all of Bec's powers.

Regicide
While Jack idled away doodling bitter artwork of the Queen on a parking ticket, the Black Queen appeared on one of his monitors. The Queen appeared in the room and demanded he wear his new, frilly, humiliating outfit. When Jack refused, she tried out a number of equally humiliating costumes on him, until Jack snapped and ripped off his jester garb. The Queen threatened him with the blade in her chest until Jack grabbed Jade's green package. He reached inside of it, and used the bunny it contained to deprive the Queen of her ring before killing her. He then picked up her ring and donned it himself, taking a considerably more powerful prototyped form. He now refers to himself as the Sovereign Slayer and has made the wearing of the prototyped costumes optional for his agents.

From there, he encroached on the Skaian Battlefield, performing a second coup de grace and interrupting the Warweary Villein's uprising, bisecting the Black King's scepter and decapitating the second member of the Derse royalty. He dons the Black King's crown and faces off with WV.

Through his mutinous actions, Jack had become an unexpected variable in the game, and his seizure of power has disastrous consequences. This chain of events led to his position as a major antagonist for the remainder of the story. Jack's extreme variability (and more directly, his usurpation) has been confirmed by Karkat as what causes the kids' version of The Reckoning to occur earlier than expected, making the game impossible for the kids to win. Soon after Karkat confirms this, it begins.

Rampage
Jack Noir then proceeds to promptly flip the fuck out.

After killing the Black King, Jack begins a rampage on the Battlefield, indiscriminately slaughtering both members of the black and white army and devastating Skaia using the destructive power of the Black Ring. He leaves only the Warweary Villein standing for reasons that are unclear.

Afterward, the Courtyard Droll hands him the White King's scepter. He uses it to initiate the Reckoning, and heads to Prospit. After littering the streets with Prospitian corpses and destroying parts of the planet, he severs the chain that holds together Prospit and its moon, the latter of which then falls out of orbit and collides with the Battlefield, while the main planet drifts off, in shambles.



After Dream Jade is killed by the impact of the moon and John reads her letter, Jack appears in front of him brandishing the sword in his midriff, seeking the White Queen's ring. However, before he can kill Dream John and retrieve his prize, he is stopped in his tracks by the same bunny that he had killed the Black Queen with, and recently relinquished to the Parcel Mistress upon the fulfilment of their deal. Daunted by the bunny's raw power, he flees. Later still, he engages in a sword fight with Dave's Bro on top of the Beat Mesa in the Land of Heat and Clockwork, for unknown reasons and at an unknown point in time. Surprisingly, his fighting skills are matched by Bro's, proving that guardians are significantly more capable than previously thought.



He then finds Bro in the Land of Wind and Shade and returns his sword, presumably so that they may finish their battle. This time Bro unleashes a repaired Lil' Cal and Davesprite enters the fray. An irritated Jack sets the oil rivers of LOWAS on fire, possibly out of anger at being denied a fair duel.

During the fight, Jade's kernelsprite is prototyped with Becquerel, shortly prior to her entry to the Medium. This effectively granted Noir First Guardian status, or at least abilities, in addition to the power that the Black Ring provided—which, even before, was already capable of wrecking planets.

The fight is quickly turned around; shortly after his transformation, he kills Bro and wounds Davesprite. Bro is impaled with his own sword, pinning his lifeless chest to the platform, comparable to Jack's own prototyping, while Davesprite seemingly absconds into his pendant.

He proceeds to fly to John's Quest Bed, and kills him in his sleep (inadvertently causing him to revive in the God Tiers)--perhaps as revenge for his earlier encounter with him, even though the only injuries he could have sustained would be to his pride.

He eventually makes his way back to Skaia and finds Dad and Mom in a castle. He proceeds to kill them while John is somewhere drilling into the planet to find The Tumor. He then goes on a trophy binge, taking and wearing the guardians' and Lil' Cal's Accessories. However, he ultimately decides to only keep Cal, whom he refers to as his "only friend," and throws the other guardians' accessories to the ground. He then goes through the castle where he killed Mom and Dad, and kills all the inhabitants, also destroying many parts of the castle, including banners that represent the kids (except for Jade). He returns to the roof and is confronted by John and Rose. Before a battle can begin, Jack backstabs John, and after a brief scuffle, kills Rose as well. John comes back to life thanks to his God Tier status, while Rose is left with her dream self.

After killing Rose, and before John is revived, Courtyard Droll contacts him to relay the information that the wallet containing The Tumor had been stolen and was in his possession (the Bunny had actually stolen it out of the wallet beforehand). Jack expresses rage that the Courtyard Droll had not killed Jade as he'd instructed, teleports to the ship that WV? was piloting en route to Derse's Moon, and destroys it. Part of it flies into a gate and ends up on Earth, marking the beginning of WV's exile.



Some time shortly after, he heads to the Land of Frost and Frogs and interrupts Jade and Dave in their frog-collecting for yet another battle. While he can't bring himself to attack Jade and Dave is shown to be able to use her as a shield, he successfully kills Dave, requiring Jade to kiss him to awaken his dream self.

After that point, Jack follows Jade out of the loyalty he inherited from Bec's prototyping, unable to bring himself to harm her. On Kanaya's advice, Jade goes to seek Echidna's counsel pertaining to the final frog she needs to create Bilious Slick. According to Jade, Jack was acting out the whole time, growling at Echidna and destroying some of her statues. As Jade returns to her house, Jack also tries killing some of the frogs Jade collected, leading her to whack him on the head with a newspaper to keep him in line.

He then witnesses Jade being killed by the Courtyard Droll, and proceeds to kill CD. Following this, he carries Jade's body to her Quest Bed. Afterwards, he enters a Lotus Time Capsule - exiting in 2422, a few seconds after the Writ Keeper did. He then kills every exile save PM and severely injures WV punching through the stomach section of his carapace, and takes the uranium from WV's stomach to power a transportaliser to the Troll Session.

Rampage (Troll Session)
Jack later (from his point of view) ends up in the trolls' Incipisphere after the Scratch. On this side of the Scratch, he resolves for a more ruthless and calculating method of extermination, to avoid repeating the same mistakes he made on the other side. He arrives just after the Black King was defeated and destroys the trolls' end-game door, at which point he slaughters Aradia's clones from doomed timelines. He appears to have blood on his arm after arriving in the session, which we now know is from reaching into WV and pulling out the uranium ore lodged in its stomach. He attacks one Aradiabot with Cal, at which point she time travels to hitch a ride on a meteor back to Alternia in the past.

Within the troll session, he first blows up the trolls' planets one by one. Upon reaching Prospit he slices Tavros's dream self in half and proceeds to kill Dream Karkat by destroying Prospit's moon, Kanaya's dream self, and presumably all the other Prospitian dream selves. Some period of time after this he appears at Derse, slaughtering Feferi and Nepeta and blowing up the planet, before an unexpectedly revived God Tier Aradia freezes him in place. When Aradia finally unfreezes Jack, she uses his body as a portal to the Green Sun, leaving a very confused Jack.

Later, Jack returns to the site of the trolls' endgame door. In an alternate timeline, Vriska Serket meets him there wanting to challenge him, but Jack ignores her and follows her pixie trail to the meteor in The Veil that the Trolls were hiding in. He rapidly destroys it with the Green Miles, returning to Vriska with the bodies of Karkat and Terezi as trophies (leaving the other remaining trolls' fates ambiguous). He accepts Vriska's challenge for a duel, and comments that he would be challenged by the duel, but he could not determine the outcome. This doomed timeline was seen by Terezi, and forced her to stab Vriska before she could leave to prevent it from happening.

Finally, Jack returns to Skaia and decides to destroy the very thing he hates the most: the trolls' Bilious Slick resting in the center of it. He uses Red Miles on it. In the Exile's future on Earth, the Peregrine Mendicant sees the Red Miles ripping through the night sky. According to Karkat, this is why Jack Noir is 'the cancer'.

Having destroyed Bilious Slick, he then is confronted by the Peregrine Mendicant, who has been fully prototyped, and for the first time expresses either surprise or fear, as well as a degree of red emotions. He flees from the encounter and chases the trolls' meteor through the Furthest Ring for the next three years while PM tails him.

Personality
Jack has no tolerance for things he doesn't want to do. His vicious demeanor, sarcastic nature and nasty attitude are readily apparent, and he exhibits a lack of concern for life that isn't his own. He has a propensity for shirking his royal duties in order to make deals of every sort: he sends the Parcel Mistress on a half-assed assassination mission, and closes a deal with Karkat hinging on a single moment of friendship between them. Jack sarcastically refers to the Black Queen as a wise and just ruler, but stews in his own resentment. He hated the Harlequin motif in which he was forced to dress, doing so only under the direct order of the Black Queen. He tried to draw the line at his stupid hat, but to no avail. When John's Dad went out of his way to destroy it, Jack released him out of gratitude.

After his fourth prototyping, he seems content on flying around the Incipisphere and killing at random. How much of this is part of a plan and how much is pointless destruction is anyone's guess, though he does adopt a policy of killing more ruthlessly and efficiently in the troll session, as he was tricked into leaving the kids' session.

Despite his bad behavior, Jack seems to have some sense of honor - even at times when it would seem at odds with what would be most intelligent. He immediately gives up Jade's package to PM upon the fulfilment of his bargain when he could have easily kept it and killed her, and spends some time off his rampage having epic fights with Dave's Bro, even returning Bro's sword to him at one point so that they could continue their duel. However, in the Troll session, Jack refuses to partake in duels until he allows Vriska to duel him after destroying the trolls' hideout in the Veil.

Because of the traits he received from Becquerel, he has intense feelings of loyalty towards Jade which were strong enough to prevent him from killing her as she slept upon entering the Medium. While ransacking a castle on the Battlefield, they prevented even so much as tearing down a banner depicting her symbol. During his fight against Dave and Jade, his feelings allowed Dave to use the risky Auto-Harley move, using Jade as a shield which Jack could not attack. He himself viewed this loyalty as somewhat of a weakness and ordered the Courtyard Droll to kill her. Even though he himself had ordered it, when the Courtyard Droll finally did so he became overcome with grief and rage at Jade's death and killed him.

Jack also has a tendency to really get on other people's nerves, causing them to retaliate with physical violence, often smashing him in the face with a large object, as did HS 5764 (Doc Scratch) and HS 6500 (the White Queen).

Trivia

 * Jack's prototyping with Becquerel brings some physical similarities to Anubis, Egyptian god of the dead, represented as a humanoid figure with the head of a jackal. Therefore, Jack could be called Jackal Noir (ba-dum-tish!).
 * And on the subject of Jack's similarities to various mythological beings and gods, he also has elements from the three-legged crow (most commonly referred to as the Yatagarasu, because that name is inherently cooler than Sanzuwu or Samjok-o) found in various mythologies and arts of the Eastern Hemisphere, said to personify the sun.
 * When Karkat explains to John how he and the other kids messed up their session, he says that they were dumb enough to entrust Jack with the Queen's Ring, which allowed him to gain the powers he now has. Karkat almost did this himself, but their Jack was exiled. This is because every instance of Jack Noir tries to obtain the ring, and he is supposed to be exiled or killed to prevent this.
 * Andrew Hussie has stated that Jack's prototypings were always meant to be a sort of "anti-Sepulchritude", with regards to the wings and the sword and the occasional green glow. This reference is reinforced by the fact that right before Jack steals the ring, he is seen writing with the Tectrix of the Arbitor and the Ink of Squid Pro Quo, the two items required to perform Sepulchritude.
 * Jack's name was suggested by Godbot.
 * In all sessions, Jack is the only agent whose initials are not consistent across his timeline (unlike PM, WV, etc.) While he is still known as Jack (or Bec) Noir after ascending, he styles himself as the Sovereign Slayer, bringing him into line with his troll session counterpart, who went by Scurrilous Straggler when exiled, and later Spades Slick.
 * Interestingly, in Cascade the respective Jacks of both the trolls' and the pre-Scratch kids' universes ultimately destroyed their respective universes.