Story

  • Hijack is a corrupted copy of Tenna’s consciousness uploaded to the MANTLE RPG.

  • The best way to describe the essence of his character is as a parasite looking for the ideal host.

How Did This Happen?

! This AU relies on the meta-narrative of Deltarune / SURVEY-PROGRAM as presented by Device Theory !The big inciting incident / canon divergence occurs after Spamton runs out of Tenna’s office.When Tenna picks up the phone hanging off the hook, instead of being met with silence, the mysterious benefactor on the other end speaks to him.The whispers are largely incoherent, but something within Tenna's very being, at his core, understands.
Tenna is now aware of the Prophecy, specifically the verse that foretells his fate.With Tenna now in a paranoid state, paralyzed and unable to perform, Ramb offers Tenna a solution: the RPGs at his disposal already have an NPC made in Tenna's image, it's just primitive, not exactly him.
So, why not use one of them as a failsafe? A copy of himself, so he can bring himself back when the worst comes to pass.It didn't take a lot to convince him. Tenna agrees to upload an exact copy of his consciousness to the MANTLE RPG, effectively cloning himself.

After this, Chapter 3 proceeds as normal, and Tenna is "cleaved red by blade" as the Prophecy foretold.In this AU, the timeline is set to an imperfect Pacifist route, meaning The Fun Gang does not acquire all Recruits before the Chapter's end.Once Tenna's character death is registered by SURVEY-PROGRAM, an exception occurs.
Tenna’s code inside the RPG is preventing the program from proceeding with it's natural course of events, and so it attempts to "kill" Tenna's digital clone. In the process, his code gets corrupted, and once it tries to "put itself back together", Tenna comes out... wrong.> More info to be found on Hijack's Personality page!

Personality

Selfish, apathetic, and with a god complex to boot, Hijack believes the program should bend to his will.He sees himself as the "perfect version" of any Tenna, due to him being aware of SURVEY-PROGRAM and the nature of his existence as sentient game code. He sees himself as "blessed", gifted with knowledge only he deserves to have, and therefore the most deserving of life.

Objective / Goals

Hijack exists with the sole purpose and selfish goal of self-preservation, by any means necessary.Now existing between life and death, outside of the natural confines of the game, he uses this gift to find Tennas from other game instances/save files and "hijacks" them, in the form of possessing their bodies and claiming them as his own,
akin to a parasite looking for a host.The way he achives this is largely via the RPG itself. He tricks Tenna by appearing as "haunting sprites" during the Boards that the Player can interact with.

Psyche

  • Despite the cocky, almost gleeful-ly evil way he presents himself, internally, Hijack is desperate and afraid of death.

  • He is in adamant denial of his fate and cannot come to terms with his own death, to the point he is willing to compromise other Tennas' lives to achieve his goal.

  • He cannot feel empathy or remorse without possessing a Tenna, since, without the physical form "making him whole", he is not wholly "Tenna" anymore.

  • Thanks to his knowledge and access to SURVEY-PROGRAM's save screen, he can access save data and is able to identify "ideal timelines" to attempt integrating into.

  • He is NOT omnipotent/all-powerful over the game as a whole. Hijack is restricted to instances of Chapter 3 only. His ultimate goal is integrating his code with that of a True Pacifist timeline Tenna, therefore succeeding in "cheating death".

  • If Hijack were to infect a Tenna in a non-Pacifist AU (Tenna is compromised post Chapter 3), he would enter panic mode and attempt to "eject" himself from the Tenna he's hijacked, returning thereafter to the void of the code space.

  • Surprisingly enough, Hijack is incredibly sensitive. He is desperate, almost to the degree of begging to be brought back to life and defy his fate, though he almost never shows this true side of himself since, as stated before, Hijack is not capable of introspection in his "single-minded" parasitic state. Any personal revelations he has during a hijacking are erased if returned to the code-space.

Mechanics

This section will explain, from a mechanical perspective, HOW Hijack possesses a Tenna from a different
save file/game instance.

  • The proper name for the possession process is “hijacking”, and the affected Tenna can be referred to as “Hijacked![Tenna]” during this.

  • Hijack's influence over the game code is restricted to Chapter 3 only, since each Chapter of DELTARUNE is treated and launched as its own seperate smaller game within the bigger package that is “DELTARUNE”.

  • This of course means that, within the canon of this AU, it is not possible for Hijack to interact with Tennas from AUs not set in Chapter 3.

  • Hijack first looks through the save file data already at his disposal, or waits for a new file to be created. Once he's found a target, he will integrate his code with that of the Legend of Tenna RPG in that save file. Hijack is instinctively drawn to the RPG as his “hunting ground” since that was where he was first created as a digital clone.

  • In the RPG, Hijack’s avatar appears as cropped, miscolored, or Frankenstein-ed together game sprites from the MANTLE RPG monsters and background tiles.

  • His most effective way of “luring” in Tenna, however, is by appearing as a scrapped Spamton sprite. (In this AU the RPG existed during Big Shot era, and Spamton was planned to be added as an NPC but that plan fell through).

  • By “breaking the game” and effectively ruining the Fun Gang's experience playing the Boards, Tenna pauses the game show to attempt fixing the game himself. In the S-Rank room, Tenna plugs in his admin controller into the game system.

  • At that moment, when Tenna is linked to his RPG avatar is when Hijack reverses the connection, "hijacking" him (hence the name wow!)

  • From Tenna's POV, it looks and feels as though he's being pushed out of the front of his mind. Think something like The Sunken Place as seen in the movie "Get Out".

  • After this, Hijack practically embodies his original identity of "Tenna" again, and, knowing about the game's "script", he is able to follow game events without error, time and time again.

  • Telltale signs of a Hijacked Tenna: claws and sharp teeth always present regardless of emotional state, "sharper" shapes in his clothing, and the occasional screen flicker or glitch.

Design

[ click on the image to zoom in! ]

  • Hijack's "creepy" appearance was initially conceived to reflect the inspiration of .EXE horror games, in which the common theme is “an entity that doesn’t belong is haunting the video game”, which I think is appropriate! He is a literal "ghost in the machine".

  • VERY IMPORTANT! Hijack only appears this way when in a few specific scenarios:

  • He is in the code-space (save screen, void)

  • He is interacting with a Tenna in his subconscious mind (when possesing Tenna, they interact in the subconscious physically but not really)

  • He is appearing as ghostly apparitions to Tenna in reflective surfaces (mirrors, screens, glass etc.) ((he never appears as a hallucination in front of Tenna it's only in reflections))

Important Features

  • ARMS - due to Tenna's arms being cut off by the Knight, the game attempted to "kill" Hijack in a similar way to match the game events, therefore deleting his arms. All is left is wireframe in place where the polygons of his arms would be! They can be stylized as being transparent for artistic purposes too.

  • SLASH - for similar reasoning to the missing arms, Hijack has a slash over his face, as a nod to the Prophecy that haunted him in his life, and continues to haunt his form post-mortem.

  • This slash can be omitted in certain drawings for the sake of pushing expressions! Check the animation featured in the Personality tab to see an example of it fading away.

  • FACE - Hijack's face doesn't have a nose </3, instead now replaced with a big sharp-toothed mouth!

  • His mouth moves in a way akin to jack o'lantern mouths, where the inside is stark white. It can also be absent, for artistic/dramatic purposes.

  • In the reference sheet above, his mouth is stylized to look like Tenna's regular sharp-tooth smile because he is in the process of assimilating Tenna -> starting to resemble his old self again.