Katsuhiko Jinnai (陣内 克彦) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
conquersworlds) wrote2014-03-14 02:38 pm
conquersworlds) wrote2014-03-14 02:38 pm
Entry tags:
App for Route 29
Player
Name: Dal
Personal Journal:dalicious
E-mail: redlotus.alchemy@gmail.com
AIM/MSN: AIM: AsylumBred
Timezone: EST/EDT
Current Characters in Route:
Kiyotaka Ishimaru | Dangan Ronpa |ardent
Solf J Kimblee | Fullmetal Alchemist |explosivecombat
Nonon Jakuzure | Kill la Kill |fatalissimo
Shuu Tsukiyama | Tokyo Ghoul |preybeforemeals
Character
Name: Katsuhiko Jinnai
Series: El-Hazard: The Magnificent World
Timeline: "Seventh Night: The World of Endless Adventures" - immediately after confronting Galus on the Eye of God
Canon Resource Links: El-Hazard on Wikipedia
Personality:
Katsuhiko Jinnai is, simply put, the best at everything.
No, there's no sense in arguing that statement; he is the best, fullstop. Denying it is to deny a fundamental truth about the universe - which, by the way, he is totally the center of - and it's doing a great disservice to yourself besides; really, it would benefit everyone to just prostrate themselves before him now, because as the future ruler of the world of El-Hazard, the chief grand commander of the Bugrom army (a rank that seems to have been made up on the spot to accommodate his sheer magnificence) and the current President of Shinonome High School's student council, you'll be bowing to him one day anyway so you might as well do it willingly now.
Are you cringing yet? Great! Buckle yourselves in, because it doesn't get any less embarrassing from here.
Bluntly put, Jinnai is a megalomaniac - his ego and sense of self-importance is unrivaled, and he doesn't have time for people who disagree with how much he asserts himself. The only person he'll halfway tolerate backtalk from is his sister, Nanami, and even then he doesn't take her words into account; she tries in several ways to get him to stop with problematic behavior and he just blows her off, either by eyerolling and dismissing her or just stalking off mid-conversation, having decided he's heard enough.
And he does engage in quite a bit of problematic behavior that should probably be stopped. As was noted above, he was the President of his school's student body - a position he gained through embezzling student funds for the sake of buying votes. He lies often, usually to make himself seem more important to any given situation than he actually is, and he's not above taking credit for other people's work; when he gets caught doing things that aren't smiled upon, he lashes out with either sharp words or violence - he starts swearing, he hits or shoves people, he takes out his anger on the surroundings by breaking things, and it's not unheard of for him to take school supplies and use them to cut or stab things in his immediate vicinity. Never people, mind you, he doesn't go that far, but he's very definitely got a violent streak that makes itself plain well before the main plot of the series gets going.
And then he's taken to El-Hazard thanks to a freak occurrence involving interdimensional shenanigans, and...well. It doesn't get any better, to put it lightly. Jinnai is corrupt and he's power-hungry, but he isn't stupid by any means; he's got the second-highest scores in his class, and while his methods in general are questionable when it comes to securing positions of leadership, his actual leadership skills are surprisingly good. He's shown to be a strong tactician and a brilliant motivator, and he's so confident in his own ability to lead that you can't help but become confident in your ability to follow him, should you be put in that position. He's the sort of person that you'd want at the forefront of a battle just because he'd make you feel confident that everyone involved is going to make it out of the battle just fine, because damn it, you're in his army.
And wouldn't you know, he showed up in El-Hazard and he got himself an army.
Instead of ending up in the general vicinity of Roshtaria with the other three humans brought to El-Hazard, Jinnai manages to end up in the Bugrom Empire, a section of the world inhabited by, well, massive sentient bugs. His response to this situation is to get himself captured almost immediately, manage to befriend his captors with alarming speed (seriously, in about an hour he's sitting around the campfire with the lot of them, and they're all sharing food and drink and having a grand time), convince their Queen that he is, in fact, the Messenger of God that was foretold in an ancient prophecy to lead her people to conquer the world - and then after all that, he damn near conquers the world. He presents such a threat as a military commander that the resident protag party has to use what is openly referred to as a doomsday device in order to stop his army. So regardless of what else one might say about Jinnai, he is incredibly clever, and once he decides that he's going to get something done, it's going to be done by any means possible.
Of course, it's likely telling that all of his positive leadership potential comes out while he's aiding a bunch of literal inhuman monsters - Jinnai is more than a little socially deficient when it comes to interacting with his peers. His behavior is strange to the point of seeming psychotic; besides the abovementioned violent tendencies when things don't go his way, he appears to have very little empathy for others, and his own emotional displays are open and expressive to a point of looking demented. He's very excitable and almost constantly shouting or making dramatic proclamations, and almost everything he does as far as gestures go tends to be sweeping and highly overexaggerated. His words tend to be extremely blunt - if he doesn't like someone or something he won't hesitate in saying so - and as was stated above, he lies and steals often, and overall he's just really off-putting in social situations among normal functioning human beings. It's implied at one point that this is at least part of the reason for his megalomania; he's always been a bit on the weird side even before all that started, and as such he's had very few friends - so he likes to try to make himself seem important in hopes that it'll actually stick, and eventually maybe he'll be respected and well-liked. However, he's also completely unwilling to change his own behavior (rather, he expects everyone else's behavior to change to accommodate what he wants), and so when the confidence-and-egotism tactic fails to get him anywhere, he just willfully assumes that it's a problem with everyone else rather than anything that he's doing wrong; after all, if they can't see how great he is, that's their problem.
This leads to him having problems with people who are generally well-liked because they're nice people, or because they're good at things, or for some other reason that sane people actually have friends. He interprets people's ability to give a damn as a zero-sum game: if someone else is popular and happy, then clearly they're the reason he's not popular and happy, and he tends to take this to completely deranged extremes. Currently, he's centered all of his jealousy and hatred around one of his classmates, a kind boy who happens to be good at music and sports, and is incidentally the person currently at the top of their class, grade-wise - basically, he's everything that Jinnai himself is not and wishes he was, and as such Jinnai has determined that this boy is somehow sabotaging him on purpose. The boy in question actually thinks of Jinnai as a friend and shows concern for him on several occasions; Jinnai is always quick to blow him off, assuming that it's some sort of trick or an attempt at being condescending. His problems with the guy just escalate when he gets to El-Hazard and is in a position to actually do something to him without worrying about consequences; he's not opposed to making attempts on said classmate's life without hesitation, going so far as to order a literal demon-god to kill him.
However, that isn't to say that he has no sense of compassion, or even that his sense of empathy is quite as damaged as one might think it is. For one thing, he seems to genuinely like the Bugrom, as he's often shown just talking to them and hanging out when they aren't conquering things, and even if their intelligence as a species is incredibly low he's got a surprising amount of patience for them - he tries to teach them how to help themselves when it comes to difficult situations, and while he gets annoyed when they don't appreciate the brilliance in some of his plans, he doesn't take it out on them nearly as badly as he would a human making the same "error," he just chides them and moves on with his life. Their instinct when something goes wrong is to hide behind him without shoving him at the danger facing them, implying their trust in his ability as a commander to fix the situation, and the effects of the doomsday weapon going off leave him shellshocked and upset at the notion that he and one of his soldiers might be the only survivors left from the Empire; he's shown to be genuinely happy when the rest of his squad and the Queen are shown to still be alive.
Perhaps even more telling than that, however, is the fact that he actively risks his life to rescue his sister and the classmate that he hates, and to do his part in saving the world from someone who's threatening to destroy it. He shows up during the climactic final battle to directly attack someone who's proven themselves repeatedly to be an extremely deadly individual, and once the initial attack is finished he remains between the villain and the others. When he's asked what he thinks he's doing he just becomes haughty in that way he does when he's annoyed by someone and tells the guy that he's there to protect El-Hazard because "true rulers shouldn't destroy." So Jinnai does have potential to do good and be a halfway emotionally-competent individual, and a decent leader on top of it; one could even say that that potential shows up when it counts.
...Unfortunately, "when it counts" is maybe 0.02% of the time, and the other 99.98% he's completely and utterly content to ignore it and just revel in the military-grade asskicking he's dealing out. After all, these nations full of upstarts who won't acknowledge how great he is aren't going to conquer themselves...
Strengths/Weaknesses:
✔ HIDDEN ABILITY: INFILTRATOR (...KINDA)
Due to basically being dragged through an interdimensional rift, Jinnai has been granted the ability to talk to what amount to monstrously large, sapient bugs. Since this is a canon power that is actually listed as being acceptable to keep in Route, I'm assuming his ability to talk to...well, the monstrously large, sapient bugs in Johto/Kanto is going to stick around. I'm definitely going to make sure this ability is limited only to the Bug-types, since he wasn't turned into a universal translator when it comes to animals - for example, he doesn't seem able to understand Ura, Makoto's cat, any better than anybody else; while it can be argued that Ura isn't sapient in the same way the Bugrom are (he's closer to having the intelligence and understanding of a highly-trained dog) there's also no canon evidence for Jinnai being able to actually speak to other sapient but non-human things, so for the sake of Route he's going to be just as clueless as the rest of the PC population when talking to anything non-insectoid.
✔ EH, THEY'RE MALLEABLE, THEY BOUNCE
While he's prone to fits of anger, as has been discussed above, Jinnai is a surprisingly positive person most of the time. He bounces back quickly from slights and insults - while he won't forget them, he won't let them hinder him, either. He allows very little to upset or depress him; the only time he seems genuinely upset is when he thinks that the Bugrom Empire has been totally wiped out, and when he's given a sign that that isn't the case, he's immediately back on his feet and making plans for how they can make the best of their current situation.
✔ BRING ON YOUR ARMIES AND YOUR GODS
One of the things that Jinnai is noted for is infectious amounts of determination; he doesn't give up, regardless of how the circumstances seem to be stacked against him - whether he's facing down people with superhuman strength and skill, powerful magic-users and sages, or literal gods, he goes into every battle with confidence that he can succeed and enough strength of conviction to see those battles through to their conclusion. He's confident enough in himself to tell Queen Diva that yes, he is the Messenger of God that's going to bring victory over El-Hazard to her people (despite him having never heard of this prophecy at all prior to Diva asking him if he's the Messenger in question) - but more importantly, he doesn't shirk off that responsibility once he's accepted into the Empire. He actually goes out to conquer El-Hazard, and he damn near succeeds at doing it.
✔ PAY YOUR RESPECTS TO A GREATER INTELLECT
As villains go (particularly teenage ones who have been given entirely too much power), Jinnai is far from stupid; aside from having remarkably high grades in school, he's able to command a military effectively against adult leaders who have been raised and taught their entire lives to win wars, and he does it with strategy and creativity rather than brute force. In fact, he gets angry when his soldiers want to just rush in and bludgeon people; he stops them and takes them aside and teaches them the "right way" to win, using guile rather than just zerg rushing the shit out of everything and praying for the best. A lot of his tactics involve baiting, chessmastering and generally being able to read your enemy; despite how over-the-top he tends to be when he's directly in your face, on the battlefield he's proven himself to be shrewd and almost disturbingly competent - the kid is seventeen years old and he nearly conquered an entire world, and he did it with a military that was considered subpar before he got there.
✘ WHY YES, I DO THINK THIS SONG IS ABOUT ME
Despite all his mental strengths and optimism, Jinnai is completely insufferable a lot of the time; he believes the universe revolves entirely around him and he won't be told otherwise, and even if he's forced to deal with the fact that the universe does not revolve around him he's quick to insist that it really should. He constantly insists on being the center of attention, and if he's not then he'll find ways to make people pay attention to him; he wants to be respected, and if people won't listen to it then he'll try to force them. Life is a popularity contest and he is going to do whatever he can to win, up to and including literally eliminating his competition.
✘ I'M THE HEAD OF THE BOARD AND I'M BORED OF YOUR HEAD
Jinnai has always been violent when things don't go his way, and this has just gotten worse since he was brought to El-Hazard, where he was granted things like an army, temporary control of a demon-god, and free rein to be as cruel as he wants. His military conquests weren't observed from a distance - he commands from the front lines - and they weren't clean victories and surrenders, either; in other words, Jinnai has personally ordered the deaths of possibly thousands of people without flinching, and seen to it that those orders were carried out with his own eyes. On top of this, he's also explicitly encouraged the attempted murder of everyone in the Roshtarian palace, including his sister and one of his teachers, and he's tried to have his classmate - who again, thinks of him as a friend and wants him to be okay - killed on at least three occasions, for no reason other than "I don't like him."
He's really homicidal for a teenager, is what I'm saying.
✘ FRIEND IS A FOUR-LETTER WORD
As was mentioned in the Personality section, Nanami implies at one point that a lot of the reason Jinnai is the way he is may be due to the fact that he's always been considered the weird friendless kid; he's used to being excluded or avoided, so he does whatever he can to force people to pay attention to him and respect him. Of course, in that sort of situation any respect you do get is likely to be brittle, and he seems to know that; as such, people genuinely trying to be his friend or express concern for his well-being tend to confuse him. He visibly doesn't know what to do with it when people worry about him, and he either becomes awkward about it or he actively pushes back and accuses them of lying to him; he tends to ignore people's attempts at telling him that they think of him as a friend and just carry on talking about other things like he didn't hear them. That isn't to say he doesn't want friends, but he's pretty sure that any friends he has are because he's forcing them into it and as such they aren't really his friends; this just leads him to the conclusion that he has no friends and so he needs to force more people into being his friends. But then if he does that, they're not really his friends...it's a lovely example of someone causing their own problems in spades, pretty much. Because good job, Jinnai.
✘ ALL I TAKE SHOULD BE FREE
Of course, it likely doesn't matter that he isn't aware that he's causing his own problems like that - he's incredibly entitled and he seems to think that everyone else needs to change their behavior immediately to better cater to his whims and desires. It's not enough that he lies and steals from people, apparently - he's entirely convinced that he deserves to be allowed to do so, and anyone who doesn't agree with that notion can go take a flying leap. He'll do whatever he can to avoid taking consequences for his actions, sometimes to bizarre extents; for example, he decides to tie someone to a tree for two days to prevent them from speaking against him during the whole student council presidency scandal. (That doesn't mean that I'm opposed to having him take consequences in Route - quite the opposite, actually, I think it would be good for him to actually have the "Your actions result in things" lesson drilled into his head several times, and if someone wants to nail him for being a little shit then I am more than happy to let them have at him.)
Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Team Rocket, because of course he is.
Starter: Heracross (+ Skorupi)
Password: Apple Strudel
Samples
First Person Sample:
Well, well - it seems the Empire isn't the only faction determined to conquer whatever's set forth before them!
[...Oh, good, someone else new in the Rocket base. At least he took the time to figure the filters out and lock this down to the Rocket channel rather than just screaming like hell at everybody on the network at large, and he's one of the few recent ones who isn't celebrating his arrival by throwing a grunt down a hallway. Seems someone else is going to have to carry on that proud tradition today.
Rather, he's sitting in one of those nondescript rooms in the base, 'Gear propped up on the desk in front of him; he's got the Standard Reading MaterialsTM spread out in front of him, though he doesn't seem to be paying them any mind, and he's grinning foxlike - as though he knows something you don't.
...He probably doesn't, given that he just got here, but you never know.]
To whomever's running this organization: you've made a bold choice in adding me to your ranks - a decision that can only benefit both of us, in the long-term! For I am indeed the Messenger sent by God - one who's destined to lead armies to victory and defeat all who lay in your path or stand in your way; as the future ruler of the world of El-Hazard and the current ruler of Shinonome High School, you have my word that your conquest will be a glorious one!
And to the rest of you...I'd like to speak to those that are being added to my ranks. It's a prestigious honor, and one that I look forward to bestowing on those who are interested in the victory we all deserve!
[...It's going to be a long couple of weeks for whatever high-ranking individual is responsible for training this guy.
It's going to be a really long couple of weeks.]
Third Person Sample:
It's weird, how easily a guy can get used to all this interdimensional crap. This time is different than the last, but he figures that it'd be pretty odd for it to not be; with new worlds come new experiences, and with new experiences come new challenges...
...And with new challenges apparently comes the question of why in the good hell his Drapion, Wakame, isn't speaking to him anymore.
I mean, it's not like he isn't trying, because just giving up would definitely be easier but he's never liked doing things the easy way; it's just that clearly she's being an obstinate little shit for some reason. So today he's got her out in one of the training rooms in the base, because at least then if he loses his damn patience with her he won't be causing some sort of PR nightmare for himself by letting her have it in front of a bunch of NPCs (and...not-so-NPCs).
"Oi, Wakame!"
And it's not like that isn't getting any response, because he most certainly is; it's all just sharp sounds and chittering that he can't make any sense of.
Jinnai rolls his eyes. "In words this time."
Wakame goes quiet for a moment, and if Jinnai didn't know any better he'd think he'd offended her somehow; it isn't long before the chittering and the squealing is back, though, and this time it's accompanied by a rather inspired-looking round of frantically flailing her arms around like maybe charades will help.
It doesn't help.
"You've been like this since you evolved - if you're not going to get your act together, Wakame, then I'm going to-"
And that's...about when something occurs to him, and his expression goes a little strange; he shoots Wakame an odd look before pulling his 'Gear out and bringing up the Pokédex.
"...Huh."
And then there's a pause, and Jinnai's back to giving Wakame the strangest look on the planet for a moment, but after a moment he pulls another one of his Pokéballs out, releasing the Heracross inside it with a quick toss and a burst of light.
"Umihei - translate for me."
Not like this isn't still frustrating - if anything, this is really inconvenient - but if this is due to the type change (because apparently that makes sense, as far as this world is concerned) at least it's just a temporary setback...
Name: Dal
Personal Journal:
daliciousE-mail: redlotus.alchemy@gmail.com
AIM/MSN: AIM: AsylumBred
Timezone: EST/EDT
Current Characters in Route:
Kiyotaka Ishimaru | Dangan Ronpa |
ardentSolf J Kimblee | Fullmetal Alchemist |
explosivecombatNonon Jakuzure | Kill la Kill |
fatalissimoShuu Tsukiyama | Tokyo Ghoul |
preybeforemealsCharacter
Name: Katsuhiko Jinnai
Series: El-Hazard: The Magnificent World
Timeline: "Seventh Night: The World of Endless Adventures" - immediately after confronting Galus on the Eye of God
Canon Resource Links: El-Hazard on Wikipedia
Personality:
Katsuhiko Jinnai is, simply put, the best at everything.
No, there's no sense in arguing that statement; he is the best, fullstop. Denying it is to deny a fundamental truth about the universe - which, by the way, he is totally the center of - and it's doing a great disservice to yourself besides; really, it would benefit everyone to just prostrate themselves before him now, because as the future ruler of the world of El-Hazard, the chief grand commander of the Bugrom army (a rank that seems to have been made up on the spot to accommodate his sheer magnificence) and the current President of Shinonome High School's student council, you'll be bowing to him one day anyway so you might as well do it willingly now.
Are you cringing yet? Great! Buckle yourselves in, because it doesn't get any less embarrassing from here.
Bluntly put, Jinnai is a megalomaniac - his ego and sense of self-importance is unrivaled, and he doesn't have time for people who disagree with how much he asserts himself. The only person he'll halfway tolerate backtalk from is his sister, Nanami, and even then he doesn't take her words into account; she tries in several ways to get him to stop with problematic behavior and he just blows her off, either by eyerolling and dismissing her or just stalking off mid-conversation, having decided he's heard enough.
And he does engage in quite a bit of problematic behavior that should probably be stopped. As was noted above, he was the President of his school's student body - a position he gained through embezzling student funds for the sake of buying votes. He lies often, usually to make himself seem more important to any given situation than he actually is, and he's not above taking credit for other people's work; when he gets caught doing things that aren't smiled upon, he lashes out with either sharp words or violence - he starts swearing, he hits or shoves people, he takes out his anger on the surroundings by breaking things, and it's not unheard of for him to take school supplies and use them to cut or stab things in his immediate vicinity. Never people, mind you, he doesn't go that far, but he's very definitely got a violent streak that makes itself plain well before the main plot of the series gets going.
And then he's taken to El-Hazard thanks to a freak occurrence involving interdimensional shenanigans, and...well. It doesn't get any better, to put it lightly. Jinnai is corrupt and he's power-hungry, but he isn't stupid by any means; he's got the second-highest scores in his class, and while his methods in general are questionable when it comes to securing positions of leadership, his actual leadership skills are surprisingly good. He's shown to be a strong tactician and a brilliant motivator, and he's so confident in his own ability to lead that you can't help but become confident in your ability to follow him, should you be put in that position. He's the sort of person that you'd want at the forefront of a battle just because he'd make you feel confident that everyone involved is going to make it out of the battle just fine, because damn it, you're in his army.
And wouldn't you know, he showed up in El-Hazard and he got himself an army.
Instead of ending up in the general vicinity of Roshtaria with the other three humans brought to El-Hazard, Jinnai manages to end up in the Bugrom Empire, a section of the world inhabited by, well, massive sentient bugs. His response to this situation is to get himself captured almost immediately, manage to befriend his captors with alarming speed (seriously, in about an hour he's sitting around the campfire with the lot of them, and they're all sharing food and drink and having a grand time), convince their Queen that he is, in fact, the Messenger of God that was foretold in an ancient prophecy to lead her people to conquer the world - and then after all that, he damn near conquers the world. He presents such a threat as a military commander that the resident protag party has to use what is openly referred to as a doomsday device in order to stop his army. So regardless of what else one might say about Jinnai, he is incredibly clever, and once he decides that he's going to get something done, it's going to be done by any means possible.
Of course, it's likely telling that all of his positive leadership potential comes out while he's aiding a bunch of literal inhuman monsters - Jinnai is more than a little socially deficient when it comes to interacting with his peers. His behavior is strange to the point of seeming psychotic; besides the abovementioned violent tendencies when things don't go his way, he appears to have very little empathy for others, and his own emotional displays are open and expressive to a point of looking demented. He's very excitable and almost constantly shouting or making dramatic proclamations, and almost everything he does as far as gestures go tends to be sweeping and highly overexaggerated. His words tend to be extremely blunt - if he doesn't like someone or something he won't hesitate in saying so - and as was stated above, he lies and steals often, and overall he's just really off-putting in social situations among normal functioning human beings. It's implied at one point that this is at least part of the reason for his megalomania; he's always been a bit on the weird side even before all that started, and as such he's had very few friends - so he likes to try to make himself seem important in hopes that it'll actually stick, and eventually maybe he'll be respected and well-liked. However, he's also completely unwilling to change his own behavior (rather, he expects everyone else's behavior to change to accommodate what he wants), and so when the confidence-and-egotism tactic fails to get him anywhere, he just willfully assumes that it's a problem with everyone else rather than anything that he's doing wrong; after all, if they can't see how great he is, that's their problem.
This leads to him having problems with people who are generally well-liked because they're nice people, or because they're good at things, or for some other reason that sane people actually have friends. He interprets people's ability to give a damn as a zero-sum game: if someone else is popular and happy, then clearly they're the reason he's not popular and happy, and he tends to take this to completely deranged extremes. Currently, he's centered all of his jealousy and hatred around one of his classmates, a kind boy who happens to be good at music and sports, and is incidentally the person currently at the top of their class, grade-wise - basically, he's everything that Jinnai himself is not and wishes he was, and as such Jinnai has determined that this boy is somehow sabotaging him on purpose. The boy in question actually thinks of Jinnai as a friend and shows concern for him on several occasions; Jinnai is always quick to blow him off, assuming that it's some sort of trick or an attempt at being condescending. His problems with the guy just escalate when he gets to El-Hazard and is in a position to actually do something to him without worrying about consequences; he's not opposed to making attempts on said classmate's life without hesitation, going so far as to order a literal demon-god to kill him.
However, that isn't to say that he has no sense of compassion, or even that his sense of empathy is quite as damaged as one might think it is. For one thing, he seems to genuinely like the Bugrom, as he's often shown just talking to them and hanging out when they aren't conquering things, and even if their intelligence as a species is incredibly low he's got a surprising amount of patience for them - he tries to teach them how to help themselves when it comes to difficult situations, and while he gets annoyed when they don't appreciate the brilliance in some of his plans, he doesn't take it out on them nearly as badly as he would a human making the same "error," he just chides them and moves on with his life. Their instinct when something goes wrong is to hide behind him without shoving him at the danger facing them, implying their trust in his ability as a commander to fix the situation, and the effects of the doomsday weapon going off leave him shellshocked and upset at the notion that he and one of his soldiers might be the only survivors left from the Empire; he's shown to be genuinely happy when the rest of his squad and the Queen are shown to still be alive.
Perhaps even more telling than that, however, is the fact that he actively risks his life to rescue his sister and the classmate that he hates, and to do his part in saving the world from someone who's threatening to destroy it. He shows up during the climactic final battle to directly attack someone who's proven themselves repeatedly to be an extremely deadly individual, and once the initial attack is finished he remains between the villain and the others. When he's asked what he thinks he's doing he just becomes haughty in that way he does when he's annoyed by someone and tells the guy that he's there to protect El-Hazard because "true rulers shouldn't destroy." So Jinnai does have potential to do good and be a halfway emotionally-competent individual, and a decent leader on top of it; one could even say that that potential shows up when it counts.
...Unfortunately, "when it counts" is maybe 0.02% of the time, and the other 99.98% he's completely and utterly content to ignore it and just revel in the military-grade asskicking he's dealing out. After all, these nations full of upstarts who won't acknowledge how great he is aren't going to conquer themselves...
Strengths/Weaknesses:
✔ HIDDEN ABILITY: INFILTRATOR (...KINDA)
Due to basically being dragged through an interdimensional rift, Jinnai has been granted the ability to talk to what amount to monstrously large, sapient bugs. Since this is a canon power that is actually listed as being acceptable to keep in Route, I'm assuming his ability to talk to...well, the monstrously large, sapient bugs in Johto/Kanto is going to stick around. I'm definitely going to make sure this ability is limited only to the Bug-types, since he wasn't turned into a universal translator when it comes to animals - for example, he doesn't seem able to understand Ura, Makoto's cat, any better than anybody else; while it can be argued that Ura isn't sapient in the same way the Bugrom are (he's closer to having the intelligence and understanding of a highly-trained dog) there's also no canon evidence for Jinnai being able to actually speak to other sapient but non-human things, so for the sake of Route he's going to be just as clueless as the rest of the PC population when talking to anything non-insectoid.
✔ EH, THEY'RE MALLEABLE, THEY BOUNCE
While he's prone to fits of anger, as has been discussed above, Jinnai is a surprisingly positive person most of the time. He bounces back quickly from slights and insults - while he won't forget them, he won't let them hinder him, either. He allows very little to upset or depress him; the only time he seems genuinely upset is when he thinks that the Bugrom Empire has been totally wiped out, and when he's given a sign that that isn't the case, he's immediately back on his feet and making plans for how they can make the best of their current situation.
✔ BRING ON YOUR ARMIES AND YOUR GODS
One of the things that Jinnai is noted for is infectious amounts of determination; he doesn't give up, regardless of how the circumstances seem to be stacked against him - whether he's facing down people with superhuman strength and skill, powerful magic-users and sages, or literal gods, he goes into every battle with confidence that he can succeed and enough strength of conviction to see those battles through to their conclusion. He's confident enough in himself to tell Queen Diva that yes, he is the Messenger of God that's going to bring victory over El-Hazard to her people (despite him having never heard of this prophecy at all prior to Diva asking him if he's the Messenger in question) - but more importantly, he doesn't shirk off that responsibility once he's accepted into the Empire. He actually goes out to conquer El-Hazard, and he damn near succeeds at doing it.
✔ PAY YOUR RESPECTS TO A GREATER INTELLECT
As villains go (particularly teenage ones who have been given entirely too much power), Jinnai is far from stupid; aside from having remarkably high grades in school, he's able to command a military effectively against adult leaders who have been raised and taught their entire lives to win wars, and he does it with strategy and creativity rather than brute force. In fact, he gets angry when his soldiers want to just rush in and bludgeon people; he stops them and takes them aside and teaches them the "right way" to win, using guile rather than just zerg rushing the shit out of everything and praying for the best. A lot of his tactics involve baiting, chessmastering and generally being able to read your enemy; despite how over-the-top he tends to be when he's directly in your face, on the battlefield he's proven himself to be shrewd and almost disturbingly competent - the kid is seventeen years old and he nearly conquered an entire world, and he did it with a military that was considered subpar before he got there.
✘ WHY YES, I DO THINK THIS SONG IS ABOUT ME
Despite all his mental strengths and optimism, Jinnai is completely insufferable a lot of the time; he believes the universe revolves entirely around him and he won't be told otherwise, and even if he's forced to deal with the fact that the universe does not revolve around him he's quick to insist that it really should. He constantly insists on being the center of attention, and if he's not then he'll find ways to make people pay attention to him; he wants to be respected, and if people won't listen to it then he'll try to force them. Life is a popularity contest and he is going to do whatever he can to win, up to and including literally eliminating his competition.
✘ I'M THE HEAD OF THE BOARD AND I'M BORED OF YOUR HEAD
Jinnai has always been violent when things don't go his way, and this has just gotten worse since he was brought to El-Hazard, where he was granted things like an army, temporary control of a demon-god, and free rein to be as cruel as he wants. His military conquests weren't observed from a distance - he commands from the front lines - and they weren't clean victories and surrenders, either; in other words, Jinnai has personally ordered the deaths of possibly thousands of people without flinching, and seen to it that those orders were carried out with his own eyes. On top of this, he's also explicitly encouraged the attempted murder of everyone in the Roshtarian palace, including his sister and one of his teachers, and he's tried to have his classmate - who again, thinks of him as a friend and wants him to be okay - killed on at least three occasions, for no reason other than "I don't like him."
He's really homicidal for a teenager, is what I'm saying.
✘ FRIEND IS A FOUR-LETTER WORD
As was mentioned in the Personality section, Nanami implies at one point that a lot of the reason Jinnai is the way he is may be due to the fact that he's always been considered the weird friendless kid; he's used to being excluded or avoided, so he does whatever he can to force people to pay attention to him and respect him. Of course, in that sort of situation any respect you do get is likely to be brittle, and he seems to know that; as such, people genuinely trying to be his friend or express concern for his well-being tend to confuse him. He visibly doesn't know what to do with it when people worry about him, and he either becomes awkward about it or he actively pushes back and accuses them of lying to him; he tends to ignore people's attempts at telling him that they think of him as a friend and just carry on talking about other things like he didn't hear them. That isn't to say he doesn't want friends, but he's pretty sure that any friends he has are because he's forcing them into it and as such they aren't really his friends; this just leads him to the conclusion that he has no friends and so he needs to force more people into being his friends. But then if he does that, they're not really his friends...it's a lovely example of someone causing their own problems in spades, pretty much. Because good job, Jinnai.
✘ ALL I TAKE SHOULD BE FREE
Of course, it likely doesn't matter that he isn't aware that he's causing his own problems like that - he's incredibly entitled and he seems to think that everyone else needs to change their behavior immediately to better cater to his whims and desires. It's not enough that he lies and steals from people, apparently - he's entirely convinced that he deserves to be allowed to do so, and anyone who doesn't agree with that notion can go take a flying leap. He'll do whatever he can to avoid taking consequences for his actions, sometimes to bizarre extents; for example, he decides to tie someone to a tree for two days to prevent them from speaking against him during the whole student council presidency scandal. (That doesn't mean that I'm opposed to having him take consequences in Route - quite the opposite, actually, I think it would be good for him to actually have the "Your actions result in things" lesson drilled into his head several times, and if someone wants to nail him for being a little shit then I am more than happy to let them have at him.)
Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Team Rocket, because of course he is.
Starter: Heracross (+ Skorupi)
Password: Apple Strudel
Samples
First Person Sample:
Well, well - it seems the Empire isn't the only faction determined to conquer whatever's set forth before them!
[...Oh, good, someone else new in the Rocket base. At least he took the time to figure the filters out and lock this down to the Rocket channel rather than just screaming like hell at everybody on the network at large, and he's one of the few recent ones who isn't celebrating his arrival by throwing a grunt down a hallway. Seems someone else is going to have to carry on that proud tradition today.
Rather, he's sitting in one of those nondescript rooms in the base, 'Gear propped up on the desk in front of him; he's got the Standard Reading MaterialsTM spread out in front of him, though he doesn't seem to be paying them any mind, and he's grinning foxlike - as though he knows something you don't.
...He probably doesn't, given that he just got here, but you never know.]
To whomever's running this organization: you've made a bold choice in adding me to your ranks - a decision that can only benefit both of us, in the long-term! For I am indeed the Messenger sent by God - one who's destined to lead armies to victory and defeat all who lay in your path or stand in your way; as the future ruler of the world of El-Hazard and the current ruler of Shinonome High School, you have my word that your conquest will be a glorious one!
And to the rest of you...I'd like to speak to those that are being added to my ranks. It's a prestigious honor, and one that I look forward to bestowing on those who are interested in the victory we all deserve!
[...It's going to be a long couple of weeks for whatever high-ranking individual is responsible for training this guy.
It's going to be a really long couple of weeks.]
Third Person Sample:
It's weird, how easily a guy can get used to all this interdimensional crap. This time is different than the last, but he figures that it'd be pretty odd for it to not be; with new worlds come new experiences, and with new experiences come new challenges...
...And with new challenges apparently comes the question of why in the good hell his Drapion, Wakame, isn't speaking to him anymore.
I mean, it's not like he isn't trying, because just giving up would definitely be easier but he's never liked doing things the easy way; it's just that clearly she's being an obstinate little shit for some reason. So today he's got her out in one of the training rooms in the base, because at least then if he loses his damn patience with her he won't be causing some sort of PR nightmare for himself by letting her have it in front of a bunch of NPCs (and...not-so-NPCs).
"Oi, Wakame!"
And it's not like that isn't getting any response, because he most certainly is; it's all just sharp sounds and chittering that he can't make any sense of.
Jinnai rolls his eyes. "In words this time."
Wakame goes quiet for a moment, and if Jinnai didn't know any better he'd think he'd offended her somehow; it isn't long before the chittering and the squealing is back, though, and this time it's accompanied by a rather inspired-looking round of frantically flailing her arms around like maybe charades will help.
It doesn't help.
"You've been like this since you evolved - if you're not going to get your act together, Wakame, then I'm going to-"
And that's...about when something occurs to him, and his expression goes a little strange; he shoots Wakame an odd look before pulling his 'Gear out and bringing up the Pokédex.
"...Huh."
And then there's a pause, and Jinnai's back to giving Wakame the strangest look on the planet for a moment, but after a moment he pulls another one of his Pokéballs out, releasing the Heracross inside it with a quick toss and a burst of light.
"Umihei - translate for me."
Not like this isn't still frustrating - if anything, this is really inconvenient - but if this is due to the type change (because apparently that makes sense, as far as this world is concerned) at least it's just a temporary setback...