Chapter 1: The Search for the Holy Cheerios
Vividoll: Hello! I'm back from a too-damn-long hiatus! and to kick it off, I'm gonna start this new story. Enjoy!
Character bios:
Name: Sonic
Age: 16
Personality: Sonic is impatient, but he is tolerant of people slower than he is, because let's face it, there's a lot of them:) He often gets stuck babysitting his cousin Xen. He can be kind of mean sometimes, but he's mostly a nice person. Sonic and Shadow sometimes butt heads, but since Shadow's near death, they've gotten along better. He enjoys playing video games, and though he'd never tell anyone outside his household, one of his favorites is Dance Dance Revolution.
Name: Shadow
Age: 16
Personality: Shadow is levelheaded and serious. He is often the one stopping Sonic when he's about to make a rash decision. He seems to have a horrific memory involving some grape skittles, and the fifteen deaths caused by said grape skittles. He is a huge gun nut, and collects guns of all sizes and calibers.Shadow loves MAD magazine. He also loves Cheerios, and helps Sonic take care of his hanicapped cousin Xen.
Name: Xen (Pronounced "Shen")
Age: 16
Personality: Due to a traumatic experience when he was four, Xen's memory was erased when the scientists studying his strange ability to control water realized he would never recover. Unfortunately, They erased a crucial part of his mind. As a result, Poor Xen is permanantly stuck with the sweet, innocent mind of a small child. Xen looks a lot like a adorably chubby version of Sonic, with both dark and light spots on his coat and yellow eyes. He is Sonic's cousin.
Disclaimer: If you've seen a commercial for it, I don't own it. I do own Xen, but if you want to use him give me credit. You don't even have to ask me first, just give me credit for using him.
It was the absolute worst tragedy to ever hit the hedgehog household. Sonic, Shadow, and Sonic's fat cousin Xen were all standing at the open door of the pantry, their jaws dropped so low that any classic cartoon characters that saw it probably would have committed hara-kiri knowing they couldn't do a better jaw drop.
"This… is… terrible…" Poor Sonic had those oh-so-endearing sparkly anime tears in his eyes.
"Yeah." whimpered Xen, his eyes so wide, that you might have thought the chubby hedgehog was a spiny owl. "It's like finding your guinea pig dead in its cage."
"No, man. This is like finding your grandmother dead in her bedroom." Shadow lamented, as he shook his head sadly.
Lying on the floor of the pantry, torn to little yellow shreds of its former self, its innards spilled on the floor, was the remains of… a box of Cheerios.
"What're we going to do?" asked Xen. "We can't eat Grape Nuts, that stuff tastes like chipped off pieces of particleboard!"
"We only have one choice." Shadow solemnly declared. "We have to go buy more Cheerios."
"But Shadow, where will we find a store open at six A.M.? It's hopeless!" moaned Xen.
Shadow didn't falter as he bore even worse news than the destruction of the box of Cheerios.
"There's only one store open that early in the morning that sells Cheerios."
Sonic gasped.
"You don't mean…"
"Unfortunately, I do." Shadow sighed, "We have to go to Wal-Mart."
Sonic and Xen gasped in perfect unison.
"On a Saturday? Shadow, are you high?" Sonic shouted.
"We have no choice, gang. It's either Wal Mart or Grape Nuts."
Sonic shuddered. Just the thought of the jam-packed crowds made him feel as if he were being crushed between a fat lady in sweats and an old man in jeans and a polo shirt while trying to get to the video games. Pretty much the way I have often been when I go to Wal Mart on a Saturday.
"Well… Shikata ga nai." He agreed, massaging his forehead with his gloved hand.
So the harrowing adventure to Wal Mart began, as three of our four heroes struck out to a store that supplies good cereal, but at the price of beastly crowds on weekends.
"Okay, here's the deal." Sonic whispered in the confines of their van. "We get in, get the cereal, and we get out. Are there any questions?"
"Yeah, I have one." It was Xen.
Sonic sighed.
"What is it, Xen?"
"Um… if we're going to Wal Mart to get Cereal, why are we parked at Save-a-Lot?
Sonic and Shadow looked up and sure enough, they were at the wrong store according to the sign.
"Oh, (Swearword)" Sonic cursed, getting bleeped as he used a word that I myself try not to say.
This time, they made it to the correct store. As of that moment, they were making their way into the entrance.
"Okay, guys. This is Final Jeopardy." Shadow gulped.
The doors slid open to reveal the largest crowds at that particular store that any of the three hedgehogs had ever seen. If you've ever seen a pet store cage overcrowded with rats because they kept males and females together, you know what this Wal Mart looked like. (Minus the half-eaten newborns, eeeew!) There were children screaming, women fighting over dresses, men staring at attractive young women, and Wal Mart staff ignoring customers in need of assistance.
"Oh, hell's bells." mumbled Xen.
"We gotta do what we gotta do." sulked Shadow.
The three spiny insectivores made their way through crowds and crowds of surly shoppers. They got their toes stepped on left and right and at one point an overweight person (Sonic didn't see if they were male or female) farted in Sonic's face as he ran into his/her behind. They were near the cereal aisle when they came to a roadblock.
"What the Funk and Wagnall's is this?" Sonic yelped in an exasperated tone.
Apparently there had been an accident in this aisle, a really serious one. There was a sheet covering up the mangled corpse of a Wal Mart stock boy in the sewing section. His dead body was littered with thousands upon thousands of sewing needles, which had fallen out of the un-taped bottom of a box and stabbed him fatally in well over 30,000 places on his chest and abdomen.
Sonic appealed to the paramedics and cops working the scene.
"Excuse me, sir. Could we get by?"
"Sorry, kid. This here is a crime scene. We have to dust for fingerprints so we can rule out murder as the cause of this boy's death."
"How could he have been murdered? He's chock full of sewing needles for Christ's sake!"
"Someone might have some kind of automatic needle gun or something." the cop drawled, picking his nose.
"Now where the hell would you buy something like that?" Sonic snorted.
"Look kid, this is official police business! Stay out of stuff you don't understand, you little punk!"
"Is scarfin' doughnuts all day official police business too, Officer Tubby?" Sonic sneered
"What? How dare you! I ought to arrest your disrespectful little butt right now!" roared the officer.
"For what, telling the truth?" taunted Sonic.
"That does it! Get out of this aisle right now before I decide to apprehend you for disrespect to a law officer!"
Before Sonic could say anything else, shadow and Xen grabbed him on both sides to forcefully escort him from the aisle. Once they were out of earshot, Sonic started to snicker.
"Wasn't that great how I told Officer Piggy off?" he laughed.
"Sonic, you almost got us arrested!" Shadow chastised. "I'd expect that kind of behavior from Manic, but not from you!"
"Sorry, but he was being dumb! How could you buy something like an automatic needle gun?"
"You'd be surprised what you can find on Ebay." Xen innocently added.
This made everybody get really quiet for a second before they continued onward. Xen had a way of saying things that made you think without even meaning to.
They decided the best thing to do would be to split up and search for the Cheerios in two teams. Shadow would go alone, and Sonic and Xen would go together. (They couldn't let Xen go alone, because he'd probably get distracted and forget what he was doing, or even worse, leave the store and either become lost or get hurt.)
Shadow made the decision to detour through the hunting section to eventually reach the cereal. As he walked along, the mostly male shoppers around him focused their attention on targets, the fall line of camouflage hunting wear, and the few female shoppers in this section. He had been doing a good job of keeping his mind on his mission, until our hero happened to cross the gun counter.
"Holy cow! The new Winchesters are out!" Shadow exclaimed, his eyes lighting up like a child in a toy store. If you've ever played "Shadow the Hedgehog", you know what a raging gun nut that hedgehog is.
And with that, he directed his attention to the guns behind the counter.
Meanwhile, Sonic and Xen were making their way through the various aisles without distraction. Sonic had his eyes forward, his mind set completely on his goal. Xen, however, was whipping his head all around, trying to see everything going on around him all at once. They were in the pharmaceuticals, when Xen asked Sonic a rather startling question.
"Sonikku-kun? What's a male enhancement?"
"Um…" Needless to say, Sonic was at a loss for words. He was pretty sure Xen at least knew about the "facts of life."
"It…it's what you use so you can have… um… er… relations." Sonic's cheeks were beet red.
"What are relations?" asked Xen, the look of childlike innocence he had about him turning to childlike curiosity. "Is that like your parents and siblings?"
"Er… no, Xen. You're thinking of 'relatives'. Relations are when you… You know what? It's probably better that I explain this to you when we get home. Now's really not the best place to talk about this subject."
"Oh, this is one of those hard-to-explain things that you need to think about first, isn't it?" asked Xen.
"Erm, pretty much."
And with that, they continued on.
After Shadow managed to pull himself away from the guns, he continued on to the cereal section. He walked on down the candy aisle , trying to avoid another distraction like the one that grabbed him in the hunting section.
No such luck. :)
Shadow's eyes caught sight of the best fruit candy ever invented.
"Skittles? Oh, no…"
Shadow really, really, REALLY liked skittles, but he hadn't eaten them since the tragedy.
Flashback"Okay, I'll share my skittles with you!" Shadow grudgingly said to the little hedgehog girl in front of him.
He thrust out a handful of the grape candies, since they were his least favorite, and then returned to his bag of candy. He really didn't like to share.
The girl grinned, and tossed a few of the candies in her mouth. That's when disaster struck.
Almost instantly, her expression changed to one of shock and terror. Sounds like strangulation came from her throat, as her little hands flew up to it, in an attempt to make her distress known.
Shadow knew that look. She was choking to death!
Without hesitation, he wrapped his arms around her, and began the Heimlich Maneuver. He pumped his fist twice into her upper abdomen, and a candy went flying at rocket speed through the air. It flew straight into the rear end of a lady who was bending over a rail dividing the crowds from a steep 100-meter drop. She screamed the final vocalization of her lifetime, stumbling over the rail, and plummeting 1/10 of a kilometer to her death. She landed upon a man with a cane, killing him instantly, and sending his cane flying like a spear at three teenage girls who were watching a bus on a lower terrace. The cane skewered all three of the girls, who collapsed dead, tumbling down the incline, right into the path of the bus. The driver swerved to avoid the dead girls, driving into a giant redwood, killing himself on impact, and knocking down the tree, which killed nine hikers that had been in its path.
Shadow had stood there, unable to move or speak. After seeing all of that, even the fact that the little hedgehog girl lived didn't console him. As far as he knew, one life saved didn't compensate for fifteen deaths. When he finally could speak, all he could do was scream.
End of flashback.
"Fifteen people…" Shadow whispered. "Fifteen…"
"Sir, are you okay?" asked a female voice.
Shadow looked down… then let out a sound like he'd been strangled.
He was looking at the little hedgehog girl, except she was sixteen now, and very pretty.
"Wait a sec. Do I know you? You look very familiar to me!" She asked.
"I have diarrhea!" Shadow half shouted, as he darted to the bathroom to get away from this awkward situation.
Sonic and Xen were in the grocery part of the store, but were a long way off from the cereal. There was a massive milk spill in the dairy aisle, so that put a damper on their plans. Then they ran into a catastrophic Kraft Dinner avalanche in the instant foods aisle, which sent them detouring down the coffee aisle, where they again came upon another disaster involving a three shopping cart pile-up with a casualty. This time, they wisely decided to bypass the beer aisle, knowing for a fact there would be many a drunken shopping cart accident between chronic alcoholics buying their latest installment of their vice. The trip down the frozen food aisle was uneventful, save a near riot over the last box of pizza rolls. After all of the hectic running back and forth again through crowded aisles, they found themselves standing on the precipice of the cereal aisle.
"This is it!" cheered Sonic.
A stroll down this aisle finally brought them to the prize: a box of Cheerios. Sonic reached for the absolute last box of the precious cereal… only to have a random guy grab it at the same time.
"Hey, that's mine!" Sonic growled.
"You wish, punk!" the man retorted.
They pulled on the box, both trying to take the prize from the other. Just when it seemed one of them would win the other pulled harder, regaining his edge on the battle
"Give it to me, you old fart!" Sonic snarled.
"It's mine, hedgehog!"
"I saw it first, Pops!"
"Respect your elders, you little (Swear)!"
"Hey, look! There's a sale on prune juice!" Xen yelled out.
"Alright! You can have this!" The old man abandoned the cereal to get to the "sale"
Sonic grinned at Xen.
"Thanks, 'cuz! Now let's find shadow!
And off they went.
Shadow was feeling better by now, and was waiting at the front of the store. There was a soda machine near by, and he wanted a soda. But therein was the problem. You see, Shadow only had fives in his wallet, and he didn't want to pay $5.00 for a $1.00 bottle of Koker Cola. So our friend Shadow was desperately trying to find someone with five one dollar bills.
"Hey, You got five ones for one five?" he asked an old lady.
"I don't carry money, I pay by check." She replied.
"Okay, thanks. Hey mister, got five ones for my five?"
"Sorry, all I've got are credit cards."
"Thanks anyway. Kid, do you have five ones? I'll give you my five."
"Sorry, mithter, I've only got a gift card.
"Sorry to bother you. Ma'am, can you give me five ones for a five?"
"Oh, I'm sorry kid. All I have is a debit card.
"AAARRGH!"
"Hey Shads, what're you screaming about?"
Shadow looked up.
"Oh, nothing."
"Well, let's go. We got the cereal.
So off they sauntered back to the van, and eventually home to eat Cheerios.
End Chapter 1