Death, as it turned out, was not the dramatic, cinematic experience that Marcus Webb had always imagined it would be.
There was no slow-motion montage of his life's greatest hits. No angelic choir singing him into the great beyond. No tunnel of white light with deceased relatives waving him forward like ground crew at an airport. There was just the profoundly mundane reality of choking on a mozzarella stick at two in the morning while binge-reading Archie Sonic comics on his phone, alone in his apartment, wearing a T-shirt that said "I Survived the Sonic '06 Discourse" in faded letters.
One moment he was reading Issue #1, appreciating the retro art style and marveling at how young and weirdly proportioned everyone looked in those early issues, and the next moment a particularly aggressive piece of breaded cheese lodged itself in his windpipe like it had a personal vendetta against him. He flailed. He knocked over his Mountain Dew. He tried to Heimlich himself on the back of his desk chair and succeeded only in bruising his ribs. The edges of his vision went dark. His phone clattered to the floor, still displaying the first page of the comic.
His last coherent thought, embarrassingly enough, was: Man, I never even finished reading the whole Archie run.
And then nothing.
And then—
Light.
Not the warm, welcoming light of the afterlife. Not the harsh fluorescent light of a hospital room where some miracle doctor had resuscitated him. This was a different kind of light entirely. It was bright and saturated in a way that reality simply wasn't, like someone had cranked the contrast slider on existence itself up to maximum. Everything was too vivid, too sharp, too colored, like he'd fallen headfirst into a Saturday morning cartoon.
Which, as it turned out, was almost exactly what had happened.
Marcus opened his eyes and immediately realized several things in rapid succession.
First, he was lying face-down in grass that was the most aggressively green grass he had ever seen. It wasn't just green. It was Green. Capital G, no-natural-shade-of-chlorophyll-had-ever-achieved-this-color Green. It looked like it had been colored in with a fresh Crayola marker by an enthusiastic seven-year-old.
Second, the sky above him was a shade of blue so perfect and unblemished that it looked fake. There were exactly three clouds visible, and they were the kind of perfectly fluffy, perfectly white clouds that only existed in children's drawings and Studio Ghibli films.
Third, and this was the one that really got his attention, his hands were wrong.
He held them up in front of his face, and for a long, silent moment, his brain simply refused to process what it was seeing. His hands were covered in fur. Black fur. Long, sharp-looking claws tipped each finger. They were not human hands. They were not even close to human hands. They were the hands of something that belonged in a very specific intellectual property owned by a certain Japanese video game company.
"What," Marcus said.
His voice came out wrong too. It was deeper than his voice had any right to be, with a slight rasp to it that sounded like someone had tried to blend Shadow the Hedgehog's voice actor with the concept of a thunderstorm.
He sat up. He looked down at himself. Black fur covered every visible inch of his body. A long, bushy tail curled behind him. He was wearing—oh no. Oh no. He was wearing a black bodysuit with silver armor plating on the chest. There were pointed metal shoes on his feet. He could feel something on his face, and when he reached up to touch it, his claws met the smooth, cold surface of a mask that covered everything above his mouth.
He knew this outfit. He knew this character. He had spent an embarrassing amount of time making fun of this character on social media.
He was Infinite the Jackal.
He was the most unnecessarily edgy Sonic villain ever conceived by human minds.
He was the guy whose theme song literally contained the lyrics "I'm not weak" repeated with the desperate insistence of someone who was, in fact, extremely weak in the self-esteem department.
"No," Marcus said, and even that single syllable came out sounding like a dramatic declaration of existential defiance against the uncaring cosmos. He didn't mean for it to sound like that. He just meant no. But his new vocal cords apparently had other ideas.
He scrambled to his feet—and immediately noticed that he was significantly shorter than he had been as a human. He wasn't Sonic-short, thank God, but he was definitely in that weird Mobian height range where everyone was somewhere between two and four feet tall depending on which artist was drawing them that day. He felt like he was maybe three and a half feet, which was tall for a Mobian but would have made him the world's smallest adult human.
He also noticed, with growing horror, that the world around him didn't just look like a cartoon. It looked like a specific cartoon. Or rather, a specific comic. The trees were drawn in a particular style that he recognized from spending entirely too much time looking at early '90s Sonic comics. The rolling green hills, the checkerboard patterns subtly woven into the landscape, the way the flowers seemed to have exactly five petals each—it all screamed Archie Sonic Issue #1.
"This isn't happening," Marcus said, and somehow those three words came out sounding like the tagline for a gritty reboot of a children's franchise. His voice dropped half an octave on "happening" in a way that was completely involuntary and deeply distressing.
He started patting himself down, trying to get a sense of his new body, and that was when his hand closed around something in a compartment on his belt that he hadn't noticed before. He pulled it out.
It was the Phantom Ruby.
The actual, literal Phantom Ruby from Sonic Forces. It sat in his palm, pulsing with a deep crimson light that seemed to throb in sync with his heartbeat. It was warm to the touch, almost uncomfortably so, and he could feel something emanating from it—a kind of energy that buzzed against his skin like static electricity mixed with the feeling of standing too close to a subwoofer at a concert.
"Okay," Marcus said. "Okay. So I'm dead. I choked on a mozzarella stick, I died, and now I'm Infinite the Jackal in what appears to be the Archie Sonic comic universe. Issue one, by the look of things. This is fine. This is totally fine. I'm fine."
He was not fine.
He took a deep breath—which felt weird with a muzzle instead of a nose—and tried to think rationally about his situation. The Archie Sonic comics. Issue one. He knew this. He'd literally been reading it when he died. The first issue was relatively simple. Sonic and the Freedom Fighters versus Doctor Robotnik. Early installment weirdness all over the place. Everything was lighter, goofier, more Saturday-morning-cartoon than the later issues that would get genuinely dark and complex.
If he was in Issue #1, that meant he was at the very beginning. Robotnik was still the original round, mustachioed version. The Freedom Fighters were still young. The Archie continuity hadn't gotten complicated yet. Things were still simple.
So what was Infinite the Jackal doing here?
Infinite wasn't from the Archie comics. Infinite was from Sonic Forces, a game that came out decades after the first Archie issue. He had no business being in this continuity. It was like dropping Thanos into the first issue of Spider-Man. It didn't make sense. It wasn't supposed to happen.
And yet here he was, standing in the middle of Mobius, holding a reality-warping gemstone, dressed like he was about to audition for the role of "Final Boss in a Game That Got a 5.5 on IGN."
Marcus—no, Infinite now, he supposed—tried to formulate a plan. He needed a plan. Plans were good. Plans were what separated rational people from the kind of idiots who got themselves killed choking on mozzarella sticks.
Step one, he thought. Lay low. Don't attract attention. I'm an overpowered villain character in the first issue of a comic that hasn't reached its serious arcs yet. If I start throwing around Phantom Ruby powers and acting like a main character, I'll derail everything. The Freedom Fighters need to grow, need to develop, need to go through their storylines. Sonic needs to become the hero he's meant to be. I can't interfere with that.
Step two, he continued, his strategic mind working overtime despite the existential crisis threatening to overwhelm it. Wait for Robo-Robotnik. In the later issues, the original Robotnik gets replaced by a version from an alternate dimension—Robo-Robotnik, who eventually becomes Eggman. That's when things get really dangerous. That's when the Freedom Fighters will actually need help. I can reveal myself then, lend a hand, maybe change a few of the worse outcomes. Save some people who died in the original timeline. Be a behind-the-scenes hero.
Step three: Under no circumstances whatsoever should I do anything dramatic, heroic, attention-grabbing, or cool. I am a background character. I am wallpaper. I am the Mobian equivalent of a potted plant in a hotel lobby. Nobody notices me. Nobody remembers me. I am—
A scream split the air.
It was a high-pitched, terrified scream, the kind that communicated immediate, mortal danger with crystal clarity. It came from somewhere to his left, beyond a ridge of those impossibly green hills, and it was followed immediately by the heavy, grinding sound of machinery—the unmistakable clanking of a Badnik.
Marcus froze. Every self-preservation instinct he had—which admittedly weren't great, given the mozzarella stick situation—told him to go the other direction. Walk away. Not his problem. Potted plant, remember? Hotel lobby. Background character. Lay low.
Another scream. Closer this time. And mixed in with it, the sound of something he recognized—laser fire. The high-pitched pew-pew-pew of SWATbot weapons.
His feet were already moving before his brain had finished telling them not to.
"No no no no no," he muttered as he ran, his new jackal body covering ground with a speed and agility that his old human body could never have achieved. He crested the hill in seconds and looked down into the valley below.
What he saw made his stomach drop.
There were SWATbots—six of them, the boxy, humanoid robot soldiers that served as Robotnik's rank-and-file enforcers. They were marching in a loose formation through what appeared to be a small clearing, and they had cornered someone against a rock outcropping. Even from this distance, Marcus could see who it was.
Sally Acorn.
Princess Sally Acorn, leader of the Freedom Fighters, was pressed against the rocks with her back to the stone, holding a broken branch like a weapon. She was young—younger than he'd ever seen her depicted, befitting the early-issue timeline. Her vest was torn, her fur was matted with dirt, and she had the wide-eyed look of someone who had been running for a long time and had finally run out of room to run.
She was alone. No Sonic. No Bunnie. No Antoine. Just Sally and six SWATbots closing in on her with the mechanical inevitability of a trash compactor.
Don't do it, Marcus told himself. This is the plot. She'll be fine. Sonic will show up. Sonic always shows up. That's his whole thing. He's the hero. You're the background character. You're the potted—
The lead SWATbot raised its arm cannon and fired.
The laser bolt seared through the air directly at Sally's head.
Marcus didn't think. Thinking was what potted plants did. Thinking was what background characters did. What Marcus did instead was something profoundly, catastrophically stupid.
He tripped.
It wasn't even a dramatic trip. It wasn't a heroic lunge or a calculated dive. His foot caught on a root—a single, stupid, knotted tree root that was sticking out of the ground like nature's own practical joke—and he went down hard, tumbling forward off the crest of the hill. As he fell, his hand instinctively grabbed for anything to steady himself, and what his hand found was the Phantom Ruby, still clutched in his grip.
The Ruby activated.
Later, when Marcus would try to reconstruct what happened in those next three seconds, he would never be able to fully explain it. The Phantom Ruby responded to his panic, his forward momentum, and his desperately flailing limbs by doing what the Phantom Ruby did best: warping reality in the most dramatic way possible.
A wave of crimson energy exploded outward from his body as he tumbled down the hill. It wasn't targeted. It wasn't controlled. It was the supernatural equivalent of someone accidentally setting off a fire extinguisher—a wild, undirected blast of reality-warping power that surged across the clearing like a shockwave.
The SWATbots didn't stand a chance.
The Phantom Ruby's energy hit all six of them simultaneously, and from the robots' perspective, reality simply stopped cooperating. The ground beneath them became the sky. The sky became the ground. Gravity reversed, then tripled, then reversed again. Their targeting systems, which relied on a consistent and predictable reality to function, went completely haywire. Three of them fired their arm cannons straight up into the air. Two of them walked directly into each other at full speed, crumpling like aluminum cans in a car crusher. The sixth one, the one that had fired at Sally, found its laser bolt curving away from its target in a perfect U-turn, arcing back around, and striking itself directly in the face.
The bolt Sally had been a split second from eating simply ceased to exist, swallowed by a bubble of warped space that popped like a soap bubble and was gone.
Meanwhile, Marcus was still rolling. The hill was steeper than it had looked, and his new body was not as coordinated as he'd hoped. He bounced off a rock, spun through a bush, and finally came to a stop flat on his back in the exact center of the clearing, staring up at that impossibly perfect blue sky, with the Phantom Ruby pulsing smugly in his hand.
The SWATbots were destroyed. All six of them. Scattered across the clearing in various states of dismemberment, sparking and twitching and very definitively no longer a threat. One of them had been turned inside out, which shouldn't have been physically possible for a robot but which the Phantom Ruby had accomplished anyway, apparently just because it could.
Sally Acorn was standing against the rocks, completely unharmed, staring at the carnage with an expression of pure, bewildered shock.
There was a long silence.
Marcus lay on his back and stared at the sky and thought, very clearly and very calmly: Crap.
"I—" he started to say. He meant to say something normal. Something reassuring. Something like "Are you okay?" or "Sorry about that" or "I'm just passing through, don't mind me, forget you ever saw me."
What came out of his mouth was:
"The weak deserve nothing. But you... you may yet prove worthy of surviving."
Marcus's eyes went wide behind his mask. That was not what he meant to say. That was absolutely, categorically, in no universe that had ever existed or would ever exist, what he meant to say. What he meant to say was "Are you okay." What came out instead sounded like the rejected dialogue from a Kingdom Hearts villain who had been deemed "too much" by the writers of a franchise that already included Xehanort's monologues.
Sally blinked. She lowered her broken branch slightly. She did not look alarmed by this insane statement. She did not look confused. She did not say "What the hell is wrong with you?" which was what any reasonable person should have said.
Instead, she said: "Thank you for saving me. Who are you?"
Oh no, Marcus thought. Okay, this time. This time I'll say something normal. I'll just say my name. I'll say "I'm Marcus." Simple. Easy. Two words. Even this cursed body can't screw up two words.
He opened his mouth.
"I am the one who stands in the space between destruction and oblivion. I am the void made manifest. I am... Infinite."
He delivered this line while still lying flat on his back in the dirt with leaves in his fur and a twig stuck in his tail. The dramatic pause before "Infinite" lasted exactly one and a half seconds, which was one and a half seconds too long for someone who was currently the least dignified-looking creature in the entire clearing, including the inside-out SWATbot.
Sally nodded thoughtfully, as though this were a perfectly reasonable way to introduce oneself. "Infinite. I haven't heard that name before. Are you from Knothole?"
Marcus sat up, brushing dirt off his armor. His mind was racing. He needed to leave. He needed to get out of here before he did any more damage to the timeline. He had already saved Sally from SWATbots, which may or may not have been a thing that was supposed to happen. He needed to vanish into the forest and not interact with any canon characters ever again.
He opened his mouth to say "No, I'm from far away, and I need to go now."
"I hail from the ashes of a world that could not contain my darkness. I walk alone, through shadows that would consume lesser beings. Your village... is beneath my notice."
YOUR VILLAGE IS BENEATH MY NOTICE?! Marcus screamed internally. I just called her home beneath my notice! She's the PRINCESS! That's her KINGDOM! What is WRONG with my MOUTH?!
Sally, inexplicably, smiled warmly. "Well, you should come to Knothole anyway. Anyone who can fight SWATbots like that would be a huge help to the Freedom Fighters. We could use someone with your abilities."
No! Marcus thought frantically. No no no! I am not joining the Freedom Fighters! I am a background character! I am a potted plant! I—
"The Freedom Fighters..." his mouth said, his voice dropping to a contemplative growl that sounded like distant thunder rolling across a moor. "Hmph. Perhaps your little resistance amuses me. Very well. I shall grace your cause with my presence... for now. But know this—I fight for no one. I fight because the alternative is a world too dull to exist in."
He struck a pose as he said this. He didn't mean to strike a pose. His body just did it. One hand went to his hip, the other swept outward in a gesture that somehow managed to be both dismissive and dramatic. His coat—wait, did he have a coat? He looked down. He had apparently had a long, tattered black coat this entire time and had simply failed to notice it. Of course he did. Of course he did. Because he was Infinite the Jackal, and Infinite the Jackal would never be caught dead without a dramatically billowing coat, even on a day with zero wind.
The coat billowed anyway. It was billowing in defiance of meteorology.
"That's great!" Sally said, with the cheerful enthusiasm of someone who had just been told by a masked stranger that her cause "amused" him. "Follow me. Knothole isn't far."
And so Marcus—Infinite—the most unnecessarily edgy being to ever exist on Mobius—followed Princess Sally Acorn through the forest, his coat billowing behind him in nonexistent wind, his mask gleaming in the dappled sunlight, his mind screaming a continuous, unbroken stream of internal profanity.
This is fine, he thought hysterically. I accidentally saved a main character, introduced myself like a DeviantArt OC from 2007, insulted her home, and agreed to join the resistance in the most condescending way possible. But it's FINE. I'll just... be quiet. I won't say anything else. I'll be the strong, silent type. The mysterious ally who doesn't talk. It'll be fine.
They walked in silence for approximately forty-five seconds before Sally spoke again.
"So, Infinite, what exactly was that power you used back there? I've never seen anything like it."
Marcus clenched his jaw. He could feel words building in his throat, pressing against his teeth like prisoners rattling the bars of their cells. He tried to swallow them down. He tried to think of something normal to say. He tried with every fiber of his being to just say "It's a gem that creates illusions" like a normal person.
"What you witnessed was but a fraction of my true power. The Phantom Ruby bends reality to my will—space, time, perception... all of it is nothing more than clay in my hands. I could unmake this forest with a thought. I could turn the sky to ash and the rivers to dust. But I choose restraint... because true power is knowing when not to destroy."
He could hear how edgy it sounded. He could hear it leaving his mouth in real time, each word more unnecessarily dramatic than the last, and he was powerless to stop it. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion, except the car was his dignity and the crash was into a wall made of tryhard anime villain dialogue.
"That's incredible," Sally said, genuinely impressed. "With power like that, you could turn the tide against Robotnik."
"Robotnik," Infinite said, and even the way he said the name sounded like a threat—like the word itself had done something to personally offend him. "Is that the puppet master who commands these machines? How... quaint. I have faced entities that would make your 'Robotnik' weep with inadequacy. But if he stands in my path... I will show him what true despair feels like."
Sally glanced at him with an expression of mild concern—not at the content of what he'd said, which she apparently found completely normal, but at the implication that he might be underestimating Robotnik.
"Don't take him lightly," she warned. "He's already conquered most of Mobius. He's turned most of the population into robots."
Marcus wanted to say "I know, I've read the comics." Instead:
"Let him have his conquered world. Empires built on the screams of the innocent are houses of cards in the wind of inevitability. I will be that wind."
I WILL BE THAT WIND?! Marcus's internal monologue had achieved a pitch that would have shattered glass if thoughts could make sound. WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?! WIND DOESN'T KNOCK OVER EMPIRES! THAT'S NOT HOW WIND WORKS! THAT'S NOT HOW ANYTHING WORKS!
"That's... actually really poetic," Sally said.
IT IS NOT POETIC. IT IS NONSENSE. PLEASE RECOGNIZE THAT IT IS NONSENSE.
They continued through the forest, and Marcus made a concentrated effort to not speak. He pressed his lips together. He focused on walking. He counted trees. He did everything in his power to simply exist in silence like a normal, non-edgy person.
It almost worked.
They reached Knothole Village about twenty minutes later, emerging from the dense forest into a hidden clearing filled with small, rustic structures built into and around the trees. It was exactly as Marcus had imagined it from the comics—cozy, secretive, alive with the quiet bustle of Mobians going about their daily lives in defiance of Robotnik's tyranny.
And standing right in the center of the village, tapping his foot with characteristic impatience, was Sonic the Hedgehog.
He was shorter in person. Bluer, too, if that was possible. His quills were that perfect, gravity-defying arrangement that no amount of hair gel could achieve on a human head. He was wearing his trademark red sneakers, and he had that cocky, lopsided grin that Marcus had seen in approximately ten thousand different pieces of media over the course of his life.
"Yo, Sal!" Sonic called out, zipping over to them in a blur of blue. "Where've you been? I was about to come looking for—" He stopped short when he noticed Infinite. His eyes traveled up and down the jackal's armored form, taking in the mask, the coat, the general aura of "final boss energy" that Marcus was apparently radiating whether he wanted to or not.
"Uh," Sonic said. "Who's the edgy guy?"
He called me edgy. He actually called me edgy. Sonic the Hedgehog just looked at me and his first thought was "edgy." I am living in a nightmare.
Sally stepped forward. "Sonic, this is Infinite. He saved my life. A squad of SWATbots had me cornered, and he destroyed all six of them in seconds. He has some kind of incredible power—he can warp reality itself."
Sonic raised an eyebrow. He looked at Infinite with renewed interest and, Marcus noted with growing dread, a spark of competitive curiosity. "Reality warping, huh? That's pretty cool. So what's your deal, Infinite? Where'd you come from?"
Marcus took a deep breath. Just say "far away." Two words. "Far away." You can do this. You can say two normal words.
"I come from a place beyond your comprehension—a realm where the very fabric of existence frays at the edges, where the screams of dying stars are the only lullaby, and where weakness is not merely punished but erased from the annals of being itself. I have wandered through the corridors of oblivion and emerged... unchanged. Because I am the one constant in a universe of variables. I am the answer to a question that reality is too afraid to ask."
There was a pause.
Sonic blinked.
"Cool," he said. "Wanna get some chili dogs?"
Marcus wanted to cry. Not because he was sad—although he was profoundly, existentially sad—but because Sonic had just responded to what was possibly the most overwrought, melodramatic speech in the history of spoken language with "cool, wanna get some chili dogs," and apparently that was just how things worked here. Nobody questioned it. Nobody pulled him aside and said, "Hey man, are you okay? Because you're talking like you ate a thesaurus and then read too many Bleach manga." They just... accepted it. Like it was normal.
"Sustenance is irrelevant to one such as I," Marcus's mouth said, betraying him once again. "But... I suppose even the void requires fuel. Lead the way, hedgehog."
"Sweet!" Sonic said, and grabbed his arm, and before Marcus could protest, they were moving at something approaching Sonic speed through the village, the world blurring into streaks of color around them.
They arrived at a small outdoor eating area where a pot of chili was simmering over a fire. Several other Freedom Fighters were gathered around, and Marcus's heart rate spiked as he recognized each one. Bunnie Rabbot, half-roboticized and twice as tough as she looked. Antoine D'Coolette, trying very hard to look brave and largely failing. Rotor the Walrus, tinkering with some piece of equipment. Tails—little, two-tailed, too-young-to-be-in-a-war-zone Tails—sitting on a log with his namesake appendages curled around him.
They all looked up when Sonic arrived with a mysterious armored jackal in tow.
"Everyone, this is Infinite," Sonic announced. "He's new. He's got reality-warping powers and he talks like the narrator of a really intense audiobook. He's cool."
I am not cool, Marcus thought miserably. I am the opposite of cool. I am cringe incarnate. I am what happens when Hot Topic becomes sentient.
Bunnie waved cheerfully. "Well, howdy there, sugar! Always nice to have new folks around. Pull up a log!"
Antoine eyed him suspiciously. "And 'ow do we know zis stranger can be trusted, eh? 'E could be one of Robotnik's spies!"
Marcus opened his mouth. He was going to say "I'm not a spy." That was it. Four words. Simple. Direct. Not edgy.
"Trust is a luxury afforded to those who have never gazed into the abyss and felt it gaze back. I am no one's spy, fox. I am no one's anything. I am the storm that answers to no master, the blade that cuts without allegiance. If I wished you harm, this conversation would have ended before it began."
He paused. Then, hating himself:
"Also, I'm a jackal, not a fox."
Antoine stared at him for a long moment, then turned to Sonic. "I like him," he said, which was wrong on so many levels that Marcus didn't even know where to begin.
"See?" Sonic said, slapping Infinite on the back. "He fits right in."
I DO NOT FIT RIGHT IN. I AM AN INTERDIMENSIONAL INTERLOPER WITH AN UNCONTROLLABLE EDGINESS DISORDER. THIS IS THE OPPOSITE OF FITTING IN.
Tails approached cautiously, his twin tails spinning behind him in that way that shouldn't have been aerodynamically possible but absolutely was. He looked up at Infinite with wide, curious eyes.
"Mister Infinite? What's that red gem you're carrying?"
Marcus looked down. The Phantom Ruby was still in his hand, pulsing gently. He'd been holding it the entire time and had somehow forgotten about it. He tried to put it away, to slip it back into whatever pocket or compartment it had come from, but his hand refused to cooperate. Instead, he held it up dramatically, letting the light catch it at just the right angle to cast crimson reflections across his mask.
"This... is the Phantom Ruby. It is the crystallized essence of unreality itself—a gem that exists in the space between what is and what could never be. It does not create. It does not destroy. It denies. It looks at the laws of physics, the rules of nature, the very axioms of existence, and it says... 'No.' In the hands of a lesser being, it would be a tool. In my hands..."
He paused for effect. He didn't want to pause for effect. His body just did it, holding the dramatic beat with the practiced timing of a community theater actor who had watched too many Christopher Lee movies.
"...it is a sentence."
Tails's eyes were the size of dinner plates. "That's so COOL!"
It's NOT cool, Tails! It's CRINGE! I sound like a Magic: The Gathering flavor text written by an AI that was trained exclusively on Sephiroth quotes!
But of course, he couldn't say that. He could never say what he actually meant. His mouth was a hostage to whatever cosmic force had decided that Infinite the Jackal was physically incapable of speaking like a normal person.
Rotor had wandered over during the Phantom Ruby monologue, professional curiosity overriding any social awkwardness. "A gem that warps reality? That's fascinating. Do you think I could study it? Run some tests?"
"You may observe it from a distance, as one observes the sun—with reverence and the understanding that to come too close is to invite annihilation."
Rotor nodded seriously. "So that's a maybe?"
"...It is a perhaps that leans toward the shadow of possibly."
"Great! I'll set up some scanning equipment."
Marcus sat down heavily on a log and accepted a chili dog from Bunnie with a nod that he managed to make look like a solemn acknowledgment of a warrior's offering rather than a guy saying "thanks." He ate the chili dog in silence, grateful that at least chewing didn't require him to speak.
The chili dog was good. It was really good, actually. It tasted like a cartoon version of a chili dog, which meant it tasted like the Platonic ideal of a chili dog—the perfect chili dog that existed in theory but could never quite be achieved in the real world. Every bite was exactly the right ratio of bread to chili to hot dog. Nothing was too hot or too cold. The cheese—there was cheese, and it was perfect cheese—melted at precisely the right consistency.
For one blessed minute, Marcus forgot about his situation and just enjoyed a really good chili dog.
Then Sonic sat down next to him, and the minute ended.
"So, Infinite," Sonic said, leaning back with his hands behind his head in that way that managed to look casual and cool simultaneously. "Sally tells me you've got some serious firepower. We could really use a guy like you. Robotnik's been stepping up his game lately—more SWATbots, more Badniks, more everything. Big battle coming up soon. You in?"
Marcus took a deep breath through his nose. He knew what was coming. He could feel the words forming in his throat like a physical presence, building pressure, demanding release. He tried to fight it. He clenched his jaw. He bit the inside of his cheek.
It was no use.
"War is the natural state of those who refuse to kneel. I do not 'join' causes, hedgehog. Causes join me. But if your war intersects with my path... then your enemies will learn why the universe trembles when I walk."
Sonic grinned. "I'll take that as a yes."
It wasn't a yes! It was supposed to be a yes, but it came out as... whatever that was! I don't even know what I said! Something about the universe trembling?! The universe doesn't tremble! The universe is, by definition, too big to tremble! It contains EVERYTHING! You can't tremble when you're EVERYTHING!
"Great!" Sonic said, hopping to his feet with that boundless energy that defined his character. "Oh, one thing though—" He pointed at Infinite's belt. "Is that a Chaos Emerald?"
Marcus looked down. Clipped to his belt, in a compartment he hadn't noticed before (he was beginning to suspect his outfit had more hidden compartments than a spy's trench coat), was a glowing green gemstone that he immediately recognized.
It was, indeed, a Chaos Emerald.
He had a Chaos Emerald.
Of course he had a Chaos Emerald. Because apparently being Infinite the Jackal in the Archie Sonic universe meant being loaded with plot-relevant gemstones like a walking jewelry store. He had the Phantom Ruby AND a Chaos Emerald. He was carrying more magical rocks than a New Age crystal shop.
"Yeah, that's one of ours," Sonic said, his tone shifting slightly. Still friendly, but with an edge of seriousness beneath it. "We've been looking for that Emerald for weeks. We kind of need it back. Robotnik's after them too, and if he gets all seven..." He let the implication hang in the air.
Marcus knew this. He knew the importance of the Chaos Emeralds. He knew Sonic needed them. He wanted to give it back. He absolutely, one hundred percent, no questions asked, wanted to hand over the Chaos Emerald and be done with it.
He reached for the Emerald. His hand closed around it. He began to extend it toward Sonic.
And then his mouth opened.
"If you want it..."
No.
"...then you'll have to take it."
NO.
"But you already knew that."
NOOOOOO!
He heard the words leave his mouth and felt his soul try to exit his body through his ears. He had just quoted Vergil from Devil May Cry 5. He had just quoted Vergil from Devil May Cry 5 AT SONIC THE HEDGEHOG over a CHAOS EMERALD that he was TRYING TO GIVE BACK. His hand, which had been reaching out to return the Emerald, had instead pulled it back and tucked it protectively against his chest, his claws curling around it possessively.
His body was acting on pure edgy instinct, overriding his conscious desires with the accumulated energy of every rival-character trope ever written.
Sonic's eyes narrowed. Not in anger—in excitement. That competitive spark that Marcus had noticed earlier flared into a full blaze. The hedgehog dropped into a slight crouch, his grin widening into something that was part friendly, part feral.
"Oh, it's like that, huh?" Sonic said. "Alright, mystery guy. If you wanna dance, let's dance."
I DON'T WANT TO DANCE! I WANT TO GIVE YOU THE EMERALD! I WAS LITERALLY IN THE PROCESS OF GIVING YOU THE EMERALD! MY HAND WAS MOVING IN YOUR DIRECTION! IT WAS A COMPLETED ACTION THAT MY STUPID MOUTH REVERSED AT THE LAST POSSIBLE SECOND!
But it was too late. Sonic was already moving.
The blue blur launched himself forward with a burst of speed that turned him into a streak of azure light, closing the distance between them in a fraction of a second. He came in low, going for the Emerald with a quick grab that would have worked on anyone slower than him—which was, historically, everyone.
But Marcus's body moved on its own.
Infinite's reflexes kicked in like a switch being flipped. His body twisted to the side, dodging Sonic's grab with a fluid, almost lazy motion that he absolutely did not earn and definitely did not consciously execute. The Phantom Ruby flared in his other hand, and a ripple of crimson energy pulsed outward, creating a brief distortion in the air between them—not an attack, just a barrier, a momentary wall of warped space that Sonic bounced off like he'd hit a trampoline.
Sonic flipped in midair, landed on his feet, and skidded backward. His grin hadn't faded. If anything, it had gotten wider.
"Okay, you're fast," Sonic acknowledged. "Faster than I expected. This might actually be fun."
THIS IS NOT FUN. THIS IS A NIGHTMARE. I AM HAVING A FIGHT I DON'T WANT TO HAVE OVER AN ITEM I'M TRYING TO GIVE AWAY BECAUSE MY MOUTH QUOTED A VIDEO GAME CHARACTER FROM A FRANCHISE THAT DOESN'T EXIST IN THIS UNIVERSE.
Sonic came at him again, this time in a spin dash—that iconic, curled-up, rolling ball of blue destruction that had been his signature move since 1991. He rocketed across the clearing like a sapphire cannonball, chewing up the ground beneath him, aimed directly at Infinite's midsection.
Marcus panicked. The Phantom Ruby responded to his panic, as it always did, with maximum theatricality.
Reality glitched.
The ground beneath Sonic's spin dash suddenly wasn't ground anymore—it was a vertical wall, then a ceiling, then a spiral, the terrain folding and warping like a piece of paper being crumpled by an invisible hand. Sonic's spin dash, which relied on consistent terrain to maintain its trajectory, went wildly off course. He unrolled from his ball, found himself running up what had been the ground but was now a ramp pointed at the sky, and launched himself inadvertently into the air.
"Whoa!" Sonic yelled, pinwheeling his arms as he arced upward.
Marcus didn't waste the opening—his body didn't let him. Infinite leaped, propelled by the Phantom Ruby's energy, a trail of crimson light streaming behind him like a comet's tail. He met Sonic at the apex of the hedgehog's unintended flight, and for one frozen moment, they were face to face in midair, the Chaos Emerald glowing between them.
"You're fast, hedgehog," Infinite said, his voice carrying clearly despite the wind. "But speed without purpose is just running away from the truth you're too afraid to face."
WHAT TRUTH?! WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT?! THERE IS NO TRUTH! THERE IS ONLY A CHAOS EMERALD THAT I AM TRYING TO RETURN TO ITS RIGHTFUL OWNER AND MY STUPID EDGY MOUTH WON'T LET ME!
Sonic grinned. "Funny—I was about to say the same thing about reality warping without a sense of humor!"
He snapped into a spin attack right there in midair, transforming from a blue hedgehog into a buzzsaw of quills aimed right at Marcus's face. It was faster than it had any right to be—Sonic was always faster than he had any right to be—and Marcus barely managed to throw up a Phantom Ruby barrier in time.
The spin attack hit the barrier like a wrecking ball hitting a window. Crimson energy shattered outward in a spray of light and sound, and both of them were blasted apart by the impact. Marcus hit the ground hard, rolling across the grass and leaving a furrow in the dirt. Sonic landed on his feet, because of course he did, because Sonic always landed on his feet.
The other Freedom Fighters had gathered to watch. None of them looked concerned. Bunnie was eating popcorn that Marcus was fairly certain hadn't existed five minutes ago. Antoine was making quiet betting sounds under his breath. Tails was watching with the rapt attention of a kid watching his favorite show. Sally had her arms crossed and was observing with the analytical eye of a strategist assessing a potential asset.
Rotor was taking notes.
Marcus got to his feet. His body was thrumming with Phantom Ruby energy, residual power crackling along his fur like static electricity. He could feel the gem's eagerness—it wanted to be used, it wanted to warp and break and deny reality, and holding it back was like trying to restrain a hurricane with a paper clip.
Sonic was bouncing on his toes, ready for round two. "Not bad, Infinite. Not bad at all. But I'm just getting warmed up."
Please let this end. Please just let me hand him the Emerald. I'll get on my knees if I have to. I'll beg. I don't care about dignity. Dignity died the moment I quoted Vergil.
"Warmed up?" Infinite's mouth said, and there was a dark chuckle in his voice that came from somewhere deep in his chest, completely unbidden and deeply embarrassing. "You misunderstand, hedgehog. I haven't even begun to try. What you've seen is the echo of my power—the shadow of a shadow. If I unleashed my true strength..."
He raised the Phantom Ruby, and it blazed like a miniature sun.
"...this world would not survive the experience."
I WOULD NOT DESTROY THIS WORLD. I HAVE NO INTENTION OF DESTROYING THIS WORLD. I LIVE IN THIS WORLD NOW. WHY WOULD I DESTROY THE WORLD I LIVE IN. THAT WOULD BE STUPID.
Sonic laughed. Actually laughed. Not mockingly—genuinely, like he was having the time of his life. "Okay, okay, I believe you! You're tough! But I still need that Emerald."
He blurred forward again, but this time he didn't go straight. He zigzagged, using his speed to create afterimages—three, five, seven copies of himself flickering across the clearing in a chaotic pattern designed to confuse and overwhelm. It was a classic Sonic tactic, and against most opponents, it would have been devastatingly effective.
Against a guy with a reality-warping gemstone that was actively yearning for an excuse to show off? Less so.
The Phantom Ruby pulsed, and Marcus's perception of the world shifted. He could see through the afterimages like they were made of glass. He could see Sonic—the real Sonic—weaving between the false copies, approaching from the left, preparing for a sweep kick that would take Infinite's legs out and let him grab the Emerald in the same motion.
Marcus tried to let it happen. He genuinely tried. He thought, as hard as he could, Let him take the Emerald. Don't dodge. Don't counter. Just stand there and let him—
His body sidestepped the kick, caught Sonic's outstretched arm, and redirected the hedgehog's momentum into a smooth, judo-like throw that sent the blue blur spiraling across the clearing. It was the kind of move that would have looked incredible in slow motion—fluid, efficient, almost beautiful in its economy of movement.
Marcus wanted to scream.
Sonic hit the ground, rolled, and came up grinning. He wasn't even winded. If anything, he looked like he was enjoying himself more with every exchange.
"Okay, for real though," Sonic said, dusting himself off. "I need that Emerald. Robotnik's building something big, and we need every Emerald we can get to stop him."
This was it. This was Marcus's chance. Sonic had just given him a direct, logical reason to hand over the Emerald. All he had to do was reach out, open his hand, and let go. Three simple actions. A child could do it. A particularly intelligent dog could do it.
He reached for the Emerald.
His hand closed around it.
He began to extend it toward Sonic.
"You speak of need as though it entitles you to what is mine. The strong do not beg, hedgehog. The strong take. And you..." His eyes glowed behind his mask, which was a new and deeply unwelcome development. "...have not yet proven yourself strong enough."
I'M DOING THE VERGIL THING AGAIN. I'M DOING THE WHOLE POWER-AND-STRENGTH SPEECH. I'M LITERALLY DOING VERGIL'S ENTIRE PHILOSOPHICAL FRAMEWORK FROM DEVIL MAY CRY AND APPLYING IT TO A SITUATION WHERE A CARTOON HEDGEHOG IS POLITELY ASKING ME FOR A ROCK.
Sonic's grin faded slightly. Not because he was offended or angry—Marcus could see the gears turning behind those green eyes. Sonic was reassessing. Recalculating. Trying to figure out whether Infinite was genuinely antagonistic or just incredibly bad at communication.
(It was the second one. It was so profoundly the second one.)
"Alright," Sonic said slowly. "You want me to prove myself? Fine. One more round. If I get the Emerald from you, I keep it. If you manage to hold onto it... well, I'll figure something out. Deal?"
Marcus wanted to say "Just take it. Please. I'm begging you."
"Your terms are acceptable. But know this—I have never been defeated. Not by man, not by machine, not by the howling void between dimensions. If you wish to be the first to claim victory over me..."
He raised one hand, claws extended, Phantom Ruby blazing.
"...then come. Show me what you're made of."
That was from like six different fighting games. I just mashed together quotes from Tekken, Street Fighter, and Mortal Kombat into one sentence. My mouth is a blender of fighting game pre-battle dialogue.
Sonic crouched. The air around him seemed to tighten, like the world itself was holding its breath. Marcus could feel it—the moment before the explosion, the calm before the sonic boom. Sonic was about to go all out.
And then Sonic moved.
There was no gradual acceleration. No buildup. One frame he was standing still, the next he was everywhere. He became not a blur but a phenomenon, a blue streak that existed in multiple places simultaneously, and the shockwave of his movement kicked up a wall of wind that flattened the grass in a perfect circle around the clearing.
Marcus's Phantom Ruby surged in response, and the world around them went red.
Reality fractured like a mirror struck by a hammer. The clearing shattered into floating islands of grass and earth, suspended in a void of crimson energy. Trees uprooted and hung in midair, frozen in place. The sky split into jagged shards, each shard reflecting a different angle of the scene below. Gravity became a suggestion rather than a law.
In this warped, broken landscape, Sonic and Infinite clashed.
Sonic came in with a homing attack, curling into his ball and rocketing toward Infinite with pinpoint accuracy. Marcus's body moved without his input, twisting aside and countering with a sweep of Phantom Ruby energy that manifested as a wall of crimson cubes—the same kind that Infinite used in Sonic Forces. The cubes materialized in Sonic's path, and the hedgehog pinballed off them, bouncing from cube to cube in a chain of rapid impacts that would have pulverized anyone else.
But Sonic was Sonic. He used the cubes like stepping stones, redirecting his momentum with each bounce, turning Infinite's own attack into a launchpad. He rocketed upward, reaching the apex of the warped space, and then came screaming back down in a drop attack aimed at the top of Infinite's head.
"Foolishness, Sonic," Infinite said, raising one hand.
DID I JUST SAY "FOOLISHNESS SONIC"?! THAT'S—THAT'S LITERALLY "FOOLISHNESS, DANTE, FOOLISHNESS" FROM DMC3! I DIDN'T EVEN CHANGE THE STRUCTURE! I JUST SWAPPED THE NAME!
"Foolishness," his mouth continued, because apparently once you started a Vergil quote, you were legally obligated to finish it. "Strength is the only thing that matters in this world. Everything else is just a delusion for the weak."
THAT'S THE REST OF THE QUOTE! I SAID THE WHOLE THING! WORD FOR WORD!
The Phantom Ruby erupted. A dome of crimson energy expanded outward from Infinite's body, catching Sonic's descending attack and holding him suspended in midair. The hedgehog struggled, pushing against the energy field with everything he had, his feet spinning like wheels as he tried to break free.
For a moment, they were locked in stasis—Sonic's unstoppable speed against Infinite's immovable reality warping. The air between them crackled and sparked. The floating islands of earth trembled. The shattered sky groaned.
Then Sonic did something that Marcus didn't expect.
He laughed.
"You know what?" Sonic said, grinning even as the energy field pressed against him from all sides. "You're alright, Infinite. Kinda wordy, but alright."
And then he kicked it into another gear.
Marcus didn't even know Sonic had another gear. The hedgehog's body glowed with a faint blue aura, and then he was moving faster than the Phantom Ruby's field could contain. He burst through the energy dome like it was tissue paper, spinning through the crimson shards, and in the time it took Marcus to blink, Sonic had circled behind him, reached around, and snatched the Chaos Emerald right off his belt.
"Got it!" Sonic announced, holding the Emerald up triumphantly.
The warped reality collapsed. The floating islands crashed back to earth. The trees righted themselves. The sky reassembled. The clearing returned to normal in a cascading wave of restoration, crimson energy dissipating like fog in sunlight.
Marcus stood in the center of the now-normal clearing, one hand still raised in a dramatic pose, the other hand empty where the Emerald had been. He stared at Sonic. Sonic stared back, Emerald in hand, grinning like he'd just won the lottery.
Relief flooded through Marcus's body so intensely that he nearly collapsed. He took it. He actually took it. Thank God. Thank every god. Thank every deity in every pantheon that has ever been worshipped by any civilization anywhere. The Emerald is back where it belongs.
"...Hmph." The sound escaped his lips before he could stop it—that quintessential anime rival noise, the acknowledging grunt that every edgy deuteragonist in the history of Japanese media had used to express grudging respect without admitting to actually feeling anything. "You are faster than I anticipated, hedgehog. Perhaps you are not entirely unworthy of my attention."
THAT'S—I CAN'T EVEN IDENTIFY WHERE THAT'S FROM BECAUSE IT'S FROM EVERYWHERE. EVERY RIVAL CHARACTER IN EVERY ANIME EVER MADE HAS SAID SOME VERSION OF THAT LINE. IT'S THE UNIVERSAL RIVAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT TEMPLATE.
Sonic tossed the Emerald in the air and caught it. "So, we good?"
Marcus wanted to say "Yes, we're good, I'm sorry for being incredibly weird about this entire interaction."
"Our conflict was merely a test—a crucible through which the truth of your strength was revealed. You have proven yourself... adequate."
ADEQUATE?! HE JUST BROKE THROUGH MY REALITY WARPING AND SNATCHED AN EMERALD OFF MY BODY IN LESS THAN A SECOND AND I CALLED HIM "ADEQUATE"?! IN WHAT UNIVERSE IS THAT "ADEQUATE"?! THAT WAS INCREDIBLE!
"I'll take 'adequate' from the guy who can break reality," Sonic said. "That's pretty much a compliment coming from you."
It was. It absolutely was a compliment. Marcus just wished his mouth had let him express it like a normal person instead of packaging it in seventeen layers of condescending rival energy.
Sally approached, her expression thoughtful. She'd been watching the entire fight, and Marcus could practically see the strategic calculations running behind her eyes. She was already thinking about how to use Infinite's abilities against Robotnik. She was already seeing him as an asset.
Which was exactly what he hadn't wanted.
"Infinite," she said, "that was impressive. With your power and Sonic's speed, we might actually have a chance at hitting Robotnik's command center directly. We've been planning an assault, but we didn't have the firepower. With you on our team—"
"I am not on your 'team,' princess." The word "princess" came out with exactly the right amount of emphasis to sound like a title he was acknowledging but not submitting to. "I walk my own path, cast in the shadow of my own resolve. But where your path and mine converge... I will walk beside you. Not behind. Not before. Beside. As an equal. Not because I need your cause, but because your cause... needs me."
Sally blinked. Then she smiled. "Fair enough. Welcome to the Freedom Fighters, Infinite."
I just got recruited into the Freedom Fighters by saying the most arrogant thing I've ever said in any life. She smiled at me. She SMILED. I told her that her cause needs me—which is the most insufferably conceited thing a person can say to someone who has been fighting a guerrilla war since childhood—and she SMILED and WELCOMED me.
This world makes no sense.
Although, to be fair, I did just shatter reality into floating islands and fight Sonic the Hedgehog in a crimson void, so maybe sense was never really on the table.
Marcus—Infinite—stood in the clearing of Knothole Village, surrounded by cartoon animals who had just witnessed him trip down a hill, accidentally save a princess, quote Vergil from Devil May Cry at a hedgehog over a rock, fight said hedgehog in a pocket dimension of his own accidental creation, lose the fight (thankfully), and get recruited into a resistance movement by being the most condescending person in the room.
And now he was a Freedom Fighter.
So much for laying low.
So much for being a potted plant.
He looked up at the sky—that impossibly perfect, impossibly blue sky—and thought about his plan. His careful, reasonable, well-thought-out plan to stay in the background and wait for Robo-Robotnik and not interfere with the timeline.
That plan was now a smoking crater, much like the SWATbots he'd accidentally destroyed, much like his dignity, much like any hope he had of getting through this new life without becoming the most embarrassing person on Mobius.
"What an interesting world this is," he murmured to no one in particular, staring at the horizon with the brooding intensity of a man contemplating the infinite vastness of existence and his own insignificance within it, when in reality he was contemplating whether it was possible to die of cringe in a cartoon universe.
"I wonder... if it will survive what's coming."
WHAT'S COMING?! NOTHING IS COMING! I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S COMING! I MEAN, I DO KNOW WHAT'S COMING BECAUSE I'VE READ THE COMICS, BUT I SHOULDN'T KNOW WHAT'S COMING AND I DEFINITELY SHOULDN'T BE MAKING OMINOUS PREDICTIONS ABOUT IT WHILE STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF A VILLAGE FULL OF PEOPLE WHO JUST AGREED TO LET ME LIVE WITH THEM!
Tails tugged on his coat. "What's coming, Mister Infinite?"
Marcus looked down at the kid. Tails was looking up at him with those big, trusting eyes, and Marcus wanted nothing more than to say "Nothing, buddy, everything's going to be fine, I was just being weird because I literally cannot stop being weird."
"The storm, child. The storm that has been brewing since before the dawn of this world's memory. It approaches on silent wings, carried by the weight of sins not yet committed and debts not yet owed. When it arrives..."
He placed a hand on Tails's head, gently, in a gesture that was meant to be reassuring but which his body executed as though he were bestowing a dark blessing upon a chosen apprentice.
"...even the light will learn to fear the dark."
Tails's eyes went wide with awe rather than terror, which was absolutely not the appropriate response to having a masked stranger tell you that light itself was going to be afraid, but which was apparently the only response anyone in this universe was capable of having to his nonsense.
"Wow," Tails breathed. "You're so cool, Mister Infinite."
Marcus closed his eyes behind his mask.
I'm not cool, Tails.
I'm the farthest thing from cool that has ever existed.
I am a dead man who choked on a mozzarella stick and got reincarnated as the living embodiment of trying too hard.
And somehow, impossibly, against all logic and reason and good taste...
He looked around at the Freedom Fighters—Sally reviewing tactical maps, Sonic inhaling chili dogs, Bunnie arm-wrestling Antoine (she was winning, obviously), Rotor scribbling equations, and Tails still staring up at him like he'd hung the moon.
...I think I might be stuck here.
"Hmph," he said, because apparently that was his default resting sound now. "This could be... interesting."
And somewhere, in whatever cosmic bureaucracy was responsible for this situation, someone was absolutely losing their mind laughing.
The sun set over Knothole Village—a perfect, painted sunset in shades of orange and gold that no real sky had ever achieved—and Infinite the Jackal, formerly Marcus Webb, professional mozzarella stick casualty and unwilling edgelord, stood silhouetted against it in a way that was almost certainly going to become someone's desktop wallpaper.
His coat billowed.
There was still no wind.
To be continued.