Major Jones

Background

Powers and Abilities

Jones is an unusually intelligent and driven soldier and pilot. Her training is *much* broader and more intensive than normal :

On the ball

How she managed to qualify for so many training programs is an enigma. But one gets the impression that her boss and mentor, General Carrington, had her trained to be his personal special agent, bodyguard and troubleshooter.

So she presumably spends all of her time assisting Carrington or training, rather than doing any ordinary work.

As a result, Major Jones can be thrown in the general direction of a situation, and be counted on to come up with a clever plan and competently execute on it.

Though she’s not a world-class special agent like XIII, she is redoubtable by the standards of the stories’s genre. Her unusual skillset allows her to competently handle subterfuge, combat, vehicles, planning, infiltration and deception.

Jones can accurately memorise large quantities of data, and was a brilliant student. Her ability to handle information has often been called computer-like.

History (part 1)

Major Jones is a cryptic military officer with unusual qualifications. Even her given name is unrevealed. Her military dossiers just list initials, and those are different in each document.

Jones was born in the dismal Watts ghetto  in the late 1950s. Her birth was never officially recorded.

Her father vanished after Jones’ birth, and her mother died of alcohol-related damage two years later.

Jones and her big brother Marcus were sent to an orphanage, but fled three years later.

Nothing else about Jones’ childhood can be documented.

Terroranschlag

When Jones was about nine, Marcus was a Black Panthers member. He was to conduct a terror attack against military officers, meant to protest the treatment of veterans of colour.

However, Jones accidentally overheard that the bomb was set to detonate when planted. Marcus was but a useful idiot who got the crappy end of internal Panthers politics.

To save her brother, little Jones warned an authoritative-looking man at the site. Then-Colonel Ben Carrington neutralised Marcus and the bomb.

Marcus was condemned to 15 years hard time but Carrington, captivated by the little girl’s calm and intelligence, became her unofficial guardian.

Interlude – General Carrington

Benjamin Carrington’s first attempt at a military career died at West Point  . That was because his affair with the school’s commander’s wife was exposed during his second year.

Carrington reupped when war was declared in Korea  . There he proved that he was a brilliant soldier, earning a Medal of Honor  .

His exploits allowed him to attend officer school, where he qualified as a lieutenant.

Carrington was an excellent officer. But his taste for brawling, alcohol and womanising was a perennial problem.

Carrington divorced his first wife, and his second wife died of pneumonia. He didn’t quite get to raise his daughter Kim, which played a role in his later mentorship of Jones.

Special operations

When the war in Southeast Asia became hot  , Carrington — by then a brigadier general — was the one who set up the elite SPAD special warfare units. One of the possible past identities of XIII, Steve Rowland, served with the SPADs.

Carrington went on to get his fourth star. He became the officer in charge of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the behest of President Sheridan.

A hard-nosed patriot, Carrington was — along with Israeli-American intelligence man Colonel Amos — one of the two senior officers who understood the scope of the conspiracy that murdered President Sheridan. He bravely sided with an apparent rogue member of the conspiracy, code-named XIII.

The ramifications of the conspiracy forced him to desert as he became marked for death. He’s since been working with Jones, XIII and their allies.

History (part 2)

Carrington had Jones enrolled at a military-style boarding school. She swiftly caught up with the other kids, then finished a year in advance.

She enrolled in the military and trained as a cadet at Fredericksburg (presumably meaning the Fort A.P. Hill training facilities  ).

After three years as a star test pilot, she went on to become a lieutenant with US Army Aviation. Then she was Carrington’s aide, which was apparently the plan all along.

From the skills she demonstrated, we assume that she spent most of her time training in specialised programs throughout the US Army rather than actually acting as an aide.

Mixed luck 13

After the assassination of President Sheridan, and Carrington’s encounter with XIII, Lieutenant Jones was detailed to assist XIII. Mission parameters included breaking the law if necessary, as she did when engineering XIII’s escape from the maximum security pen of Plain Rock.

During the unofficial operations to stop the XX Conspiracy, Jones was wounded by a gunshot to the abdomen. On the other hand, she was promoted to Major for exceptional service when the coup was defeated.

Jones and XIII were attracted toward each other as soon as they met. Their initial sex buddies relationship evolved into a genuine romance.

XIII, Carrington, Jones and their few allies delved deeper into the ramifications of the XX Conspiracy and XIII’s past. As a consequence, they had to disappear after attempting to expose the truth.

Major Jones continues to operate with her allies, but is now wanted for being AWOL.

XIII Mystery – Jones

(This is flashback material published later on. I’m kinda reluctant to consider it canon but, well).

Major Jones is the illegitimate daughter of minister Martin Calvin Wittacker, who is mostly the equivalent of Martin Luther King Jr. with a dash of Malcolm X. Her mother was the pastor’s private secretary.

Her husband was furious to discover that Mrs. Jones was pregnant. But Mrs. Jones treated Wittacker like a living god and chased her unemployed husband from their home.

After she gave birth to her daughter, Mrs. Jones was fired by Wittacker. She was expelled from the movement and forbidden to approach the minister.

Broken by this treason, Mrs. Jones died a few years later. This left her son Marcus and his half-sister to fend for themselves in the ghetto. Marcus never told his kid sister that her first name was Dream, as he feared that she would understand the clue about the identity of her father.

A very young Jones in the Watts ghetto.

Description

Jones appears to be in her late 20s, with attractive features and an unusual hair style. It looks like a sort of puffy afro even though her hair has been straightened.

Jones’ looks are reminiscent of Whitney Houston in her 20s. And Carrington looks a bit like Lee Marvin in his 60s.

Personality

Jones is a competent, intelligent, disciplined professional. She keeps her past and personal life in the shadows as much as feasible. She’s witty, whip-smart and particularly independent.

As a military officer, she seemed almost computer-like in her precision and cold detachment.

When one gets to know her a bit better she adopts a sarcastic, cynical and somewhat pixie-ish style. This is to look charming without ever revealing anything about herself, or letting people get too close.

Stand by your man

Jones fell in love with XIII almost immediately. She fell hard, and couldn’t imagine living without him.

They’ve been a close-knit item for some years now and live in a perpetual present, being unwilling (Jones) or unable (XIII) to talk about their past.

However, Jones is uncomfortable with admitting that she’s having a relationship with all the bells and whistles. She has been reluctant to take each step making XIII her steady. She preferred to clutch at straws so she could pretend that it was just casual.

Yet she felt hurt whenever XIII acted as if their relationship was casual.

She did not really hesitate when it came to going AWOL to help XIII discover the truth about himself. Although knowing that she was marked for death for her role in foiling the XX Conspiracy certainly helped.

Jones keeps calling her lover “Thirteen” or “Number Thirteen”, no matter which name is thought to be the correct one at any point of the saga.

Quotes

“See, I had this little home-cooked escape plan, a real beauty… but you decided to be a hairy-chested tough guy and escape on your own. So now I have to improvise, and I hate that.”

XIII: “Fly ? Jones, with everything that’s chasing us a helo won’t cut it.”
Lt. Jones (uncovers a VTOL Harrier jet fighter  ): “A helo won’t do, yeah. But this bird will.”

“The *problem* is that there is no such thing in the Ross Tanner file, number XIII. So how come that you speak fluent Spanish ?”

(Changing into a nurse uniform) “Looks like Team A is in trouble. So here comes Team B, namely Lieutenant Jones. Who’s now the head nurse of the White House’s medical service.” (pauses) “This plan stinks to the high heavens.”

“The best thing about you, XIII, is your ability to deliver dad jokes under any circumstance.”

“Take my advice, kiddo. Never fall in love with an amnesiac.”

DC Universe Adaptation

(This section proposes ways of using this character in DC Universe stories).

Since the XIII story takes place during an alternate version of the 1980s, Carrington and Jones could easily have become agents of the first version of Checkmate, as created right after the Crisis.

Carrington would replace your least-favourite Bishop, and Jones would be a Knight. They’d fit in quite well.

In a super-hero world, Lt. Jones might have received super-soldier enhancements. Carrington did sink a lot of resources into turning her into his personal elite operative, after all. And who doesn’t want to feature cyborg super-soldier Whitney Houston in a story, really ?

With General Carrington.

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Helper(s): Capita_Senyera.

Writeup completed on the 13^th of April, 2011.