My name is Mary Sue… well, it really isn't, but I bet you're already assuming that that's what I am, right? Before any of this happened, I was your average teenage girl – complete with tons of friends, a cute guy I liked, average grades, and hopes and dreams of one day graduating high school and leaving my dreary suburban hometown.
But, unlike what you're probably thinking, I really was, for all intents and purposes, average. I didn't have that perfect hourglass figure, those dazzling blue eyes, or those long legs that could go on for miles. Instead, I was a too-short girl with stubbornly straight dark brown hair, with not enough cleavage and a little too much ass. It's funny to think that there was a time when this was actually one of my biggest problems.
But I'm sure you want to know what this mysterious incident was, right? Well, don't laugh: I got sucked into a video game. For real. To be specific, it was Shadow the Hedgehog. Now how do these typical Mary Sue stories go? A normal teenage girl gets mysteriously sucked into a Sonic game or episode, somehow transforms into an animal, meets a normal canon character and seduces him, and then joins him on his merry little adventure?
Please. Not by a long shot.
Well there's one thing all these stories forget to mention: when you get sucked into another universe, you play by their rules. So when that TV screen started swirling and I landed smack dab in the middle of Westopolis, I expected to find myself in a hedgehog body and augmented speed, or a bird's body with the ability to fly, or a large animal's body with super strength. Boy, was I in for a rude awakening. Not only was I completely, one hundred percent human, I was in the middle of a battlefield.
In a way, I was lucky. Being human meant that I didn't have any sort of power I couldn't control… but you never thought about it that way, did you? When it comes to the Sonic universe, it's actually better if you're a human. That way, you won't have to adjust to a new body – sometimes with extra appendages added to the package – and you can focus on more important things, like the culture there and how you're going to survive.
But, like I said, I was in the middle of a battlefield. I didn't care who or what I was at the moment – I just wanted to get out. By the time I scrambled out of the crossfire between the GUN soldiers and the Black Arms (and dear lord, those aliens were fucking huge), I finally processed where I was. I'll be honest – I was a little excited when the realization first hit me. At the time, I wanted to find Shadow and Sonic (I knew they were somewhere in the city) and try to help them.
But there's the catch. I couldn't help them – not in my weak, fragile human body. And it's not like I've been training in martial arts for years and years, so I had no way to defend myself either. I'd only get in their way. But, arrogant bitch that I was, I didn't consider this at all. So I went looking for them.
Finding them was surprisingly easy – they flew right past me. The one thing about the games that sucks is that they don't really give you an accurate representation of just how fast these two hedgehogs can run. I didn't even register that I'd seen Sonic and Shadow until almost half an hour after two somethings – blue and black – whizzed past me.
And then it occurred to me: they didn't even notice me. They couldn't care less that I was even there. And I can almost guarantee that you'll face the same problem when you get sucked into something. No one cares. To Sonic and Shadow, and, by extension, every other canon character, I was nothing more than a civilian. Plain. Expendable. (Well not really, but in Shadow's case, definitely.) I couldn't be Shadow's surrogate Maria – and neither can any of you – because he didn't know me. To him, I was just a random human girl. To him, I meant nothing. Sure, if Black Doom suddenly showed up and threatened to kill me, he might have said something in my defense, but that's the other side to this: the enemy doesn't care either. In a nutshell, no one hates you enough to want you dead, but no one loves you so much that they're willing to risk life and limb for you.
Literally no one cares.
… okay, I lied. GUN cared (but, then again, they had to, because they have a duty to protect all the innocent civilians). There were two soldiers walking by, and when they saw me, they panicked. They ran to me, screaming at the top of their lungs, demanding to know why I was still outside and not hiding with the rest of the civilians. Before I could give them an answer, they ordered me to follow them. I had nowhere else to go, so I did.
And then the reality of the… you know… battlefield kicked back in. Everything was on fire, and debris was falling – the initial shock of that had long worn off by now. But I was in for yet another rude awakening – I wasn't invincible. When a huge chunk of debris fell on me, I would die, no questions asked. So I did…
… and ended up right in front of the TV back at home, dizzy, in excruciating pain, and crying. This was the sorry state in which my parents and older brother found me. I spent a week in bed with what my parents believed to be a nasty case of the flu, but I knew it was something much, much worse. One week, and the pain wore off. One week, and the shock of getting sucked into another world and actually dying in said world finally wore off.
It wasn't until almost a month later that I realized just how lucky I was that I died then – right at the beginning of the game. If I survived Westopolis, what would have happened to me? Interacting with Sonic and Shadow and their animal friends was out of the question because, well, they didn't know me, and they didn't care. Would I have just been holed up with the other innocent civilians, trying to survive a brutal alien invasion? Would I have survived the invasion and been stuck there in Westopolis for the rest of my life? Either way, I was an idiot, and it's really better for everyone, especially me, that I'm out of that world.
And then I realized that I didn't care. I was just glad to be out of that horrible battlefield, now that I'm surrounded by people who love me and actually care if I live or die. And that, really, feels better than anything else you could ever hope to achieve in a different universe.
… but I doubt any of you will listen to me. But when your perfect little alternate worlds come to bite you in the ass, don't say I didn't warn you.