Hey guys, so yeah.
I know.
I KNOW.
Trust me, I am fully, completely, 1000% aware that this is cringy. That is the point. That is the ENTIRE point. The cringe is not a bug, it is a feature. It is the MAIN feature. If this fic were a car, the cringe would be the engine, the transmission, the wheels, AND the fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror.
But here's the thing.
Here's the thing that none of you can deny no matter how hard you try.
Every. Single. One. Of you. At some point in your life. Looked at an unnecessarily edgy fictional character and thought "that is the coolest person who has ever existed, real or imaginary, and I want to BE them."
Don't lie to me. Don't you DARE lie to me. I will call you out.
You watched Sephiroth walk through the flames in the Nibelheim flashback and your twelve-year-old brain said "that's the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life." You watched him sprout that one black wing and you didn't think "that's impractical and asymmetrical" you thought "THAT IS SO SICK." The man has a fifteen-foot-long katana that makes zero practical sense and you thought it was the hardest thing ever put into a video game. Don't deny it.
You saw Cloud strife carrying that absolutely ridiculous Buster Sword, a weapon that weighs more than a motorcycle and is roughly the size of a surfboard, and you didn't think "that man's spine would shatter" you thought "I wish I had one." You watched him do that slow dramatic walk, spiky hair defying gravity, one shoulder pauldron for no reason, speaking in incomplete sentences and brooding at sunsets, and you thought he was THE guy. You wanted to BE Cloud. Some of you still do. I see your cosplays. I RESPECT your cosplays.
Xehanort. Oh, XEHANORT. This man gave monologues about darkness and light and hearts and doors and Kingdom Hearts that went on for fifteen minutes and made absolutely zero sense, stringing together words like "the χ-blade" and "the seven guardians of light and thirteen seekers of darkness" and "DARKNESS WITHIN DARKNESS AWAITS YOU" and you sat there EATING IT UP. You thought he was the most compelling villain in gaming. He had like thirteen different versions of himself running around being dramatic at teenagers and you thought every single one was peak fiction. The man literally possessed a child and you were like "what a power move." I'm not judging. I was RIGHT there with you.
Shadow the Hedgehog. Do I even need to elaborate? This man was SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to be the edgiest possible version of Sonic the Hedgehog. He was black and red. He had a tragic backstory involving a dead girl on a space station. He said "Chaos Control" with the intensity of someone declaring war on the concept of happiness. They gave him a WHOLE GAME where he could hold GUNS and ride MOTORCYCLES and say "damn" on a children's gaming platform. And did you think "this is too much"? NO. You thought he was cooler than Sonic. ADMIT IT. In 2005 you thought Shadow with a Glock was the peak of character design. Half of you STILL think that and the other half are lying.
Vergil. Oh man. VERGIL. This man sits on a plastic chair in the rain reading poetry and somehow that's the hardest scene in gaming history. He talks about power and motivation like he's giving a TED talk at a philosophy conference hosted by swords. He said "I need more power" with such conviction that it became a lifestyle. His entire personality is "what if a man was too cool to have emotions but also had ALL the emotions" and it WORKED. The Vergil chair memes exist because deep down in your hearts you know that man radiates an energy that transcends irony. You hear "Bury the Light" start playing and your blood pressure increases. He does a single judgment cut and you pause the game to collect yourselves. Don't even pretend otherwise.
Alex Mercer from Prototype. This dude wore a HOODIE and a LEATHER JACKET at the SAME TIME. He consumed people to absorb their memories. His arms turned into blades. He ran up the sides of buildings. He was the physical embodiment of a mid-2000s AMV set to Linkin Park, and you thought it was AWESOME. You played Prototype and felt like the most powerful edgelord on the planet and you LIKED it. "I'm something less than human" he said, while bodyslaming a helicopter out of the sky, and you nodded along like he was speaking gospel truth.
Sasuke Uchiha. You know what, I'm going there. This kid LEFT HIS VILLAGE, BETRAYED HIS FRIENDS, joined a SNAKE MAN, all because his brother was mean to him, and for like 300 episodes you were like "but he's so COOL though." He did the hand-in-pockets walk. He awakened new eye powers every other arc. He said "I'm an avenger" with zero irony. He stood on poles. SO MANY POLES. The man loved standing on top of poles and looking down at people and you ate it up like it was ramen at Ichiraku.
Dante from DMC. "Jackpot." That's it. That's the whole argument. The man eats pizza and shoots demons and says one-liners that would get anyone else punched in the face, but because HE says them while doing a backflip on a motorcycle that he's also using as a weapon, it's the coolest thing ever conceived. He got stabbed through the chest with his own sword and his response was basically "rude" and then he pulled it out and kept fighting. You wanted to be Dante. Everyone wanted to be Dante.
My point, and I do have one buried under all of this, is that this fic takes that energy, that SPECIFIC energy of "edgy character who is SO over-the-top that they circle past cool and become something transcendent," and it puts it in the mouth of a normal guy who CANNOT STOP IT FROM HAPPENING.
Infinite the Jackal is speaking the way ALL of these characters speak. He is channeling the collective edge of decades of fiction. He is saying things that Vergil, Shadow, Sephiroth, and every other tryhard cool guy has said, and he CANNOT TURN IT OFF, and the beautiful horrible wonderful terrible thing is that EVERYONE AROUND HIM THINKS IT'S NORMAL.
Because WE thought it was normal. When we were kids. When we were teenagers. When we were, let's be honest, full grown adults who still get chills when Vergil says "if you want it, then you'll have to take it."
The cringe IS the cool. The cool IS the cringe. They are the same thing viewed from different angles and the only difference is whether you're thirteen or thirty when you experience it.
So yes. This fic is cringy.
That's the point.
And if you read Chapter 1 and at ANY moment felt a tiny spark of "okay that was actually kind of sick though" when Infinite said something ridiculous?
Congratulations.
You understand EXACTLY what this fic is about.
See you in Chapter 2 where Infinite accidentally quotes Aizen from Bleach during a strategy meeting and tells Sally that her entire battle plan is "part of his design" when he literally just got there five minutes ago and hasn't read any of the briefing materials.
Later losers.
— The Author
P.S. Infinite's coat still billows with no wind and I will NEVER explain why. Some mysteries are sacred.
P.P.S. If you got this far and you're about to comment "this is so cringe" I need you to understand that you are telling me the sky is blue. I know. I KNOW. I built this house of cringe with my own two hands, brick by cringy brick, and I am LIVING in it. Rent free. Because I own it.
P.P.P.S. The mozzarella stick thing is based on a true fear of mine. Not the dying part. The part about dying in a way so stupid that even the afterlife judges you for it. Anyway goodnight.