A/N: I can't believe no one else has crossed over "Your Highness" with "Pineapple Express." It's so simple!
Shot, bleeding.
Bleeding to death.
Red couldn't remember how he'd wound up lying on his bathroom floor, leaning against the wall, using the toilet and bathtub wall as chair-arms. Nor how the bowl of spaghetti wound up on the toilet, or the radio before him, with his dead cat Rufus's cake sitting on top of it. He didn't remember eating a quarter of the cake, but he was still clutching the knife he'd used to cut it.
Rufus...I'll be joining ya buddy...probably in Hell, you little fucker, cuz that's what I am, a fucker...
Most damming of all, the high had long since worn off. Red was going to die sober.
"Uuuuuooohhhwhat'd I do to deserve this?" he moaned.
"You betrayed your friends, you fool."
Red blinked slowly.
He was suddenly sitting in a grand palace, like something out of the Dungeons and Dragons rip-off video game he sometimes played, the one where he'd spent six months trying to figure out how to create your own character, so he could make a super-sexy elf warrior princess and then take her on quests to rescue damsels so he could make lesbian action happen. Man, those were great times. What had happened? Oh yeah, he'd gotten shot.
He was in a throne. Glancing down at himself, he saw he was now clothed in shimmering gold armor, with a deep red cloak.
Barely audibly, Red slurred to himself, "...the fuck was in that cake?"
And standing before him was a knight (in regular, not-gold, armor). His dark hair lay in long curls, and his face was adorned with a spiffy goatee. On his shoulder sat a green lizard(?). The man stared at Red, and as Red gazed into the knight's small eyes, he suddenly seemed familiar, like someone who Red saw every day...
"Duuuude," Red slurred. "Anyone ever tell you, you look almost exactly like Ron Jeremy?"
"I know not of whom you speak," the knight said. "Only that I am many centuries dead, and you, my descendant, may soon be joining me."
"Dude, wait, woa. Descendant? No. I don't got no knights in my decendency, okay? The only royalty in my family's from the Cherokee princess on my mom's side, and I recently found out there's no such thing as a Cherokee princess, and my whole Indian heritage is probably bullshit, so there goes my best card for picking up chicks." An exhausted belch escaped the dying stoner's lips, and he shifted awkwardly in his gold armor.
"You are a prince!" the knight bellowed. "My name is Thadeuos, and like you I was once a self-serving turtle-shit, ready to betray my friends and my brother for a bit of weed. I thought I had saved my honor, when I risked my life for my brother, but I see now that I was mistaken."
"What the fuck are you talkin' about man? How the fuck did I get in this castle? Am I fucking baked right now?"
"You do not deserve to be baked." Thadeous said grimly. "My great-great-great-great-great-great-great, great-great-great-great-great-great-great..."
Red sighed and rolled his eyes.
"...great, gre...well, you get the idea. Great-grandson! Red! Look at thyself. Thou are an insult to your kind. What manner of man are you?"
"Uuum, before answering that question I just have one, little one." Red gestured out the window. "There's two moons out. That would indicate we're on some kinda' alien planet. So if you're my ancestor then...what...I'm part alien or something?"
"Do not change the subject!" Thadeous bellowed.
"Why do you have a lizard on your shoulder?"
"Steven is my loyal animal companion. He was another loved one who I once wronged. I vowed never to be so careless with my pets again."
Suddenly, something stirred in the back of Red's mind. "Rufus...I always felt like I had to appreciate him, like it was the most important thing in the world! I didn't know why, but it's why I had to keep honoring his birthday after he died..." and Red felt his voice lost in his throat, as a familiar mew echoed through the castle.
"Rufus!"
The orange tabby trotted into the throne room, and took a seat next to the knight.
"You have a decision to make, Red," Thadeous said. "Honor your friends. From your lost pets," he glanced at Rufus, "to the fellow stoners you've wronged. Be brave, be a man, and you will be rewarded. With honor. With legacy. With babes."
And a sexy woman, a sort of lady-archer character type, gracefully walked out from behind Thadeous, dressed in a revealing silken gown. Red swore, she looked exactly like Natalie Portman. And when she spoke, she sounded like Natalie too!
"Do you think a fair maiden like me would ever let this knight touch me back when he was a cowardly, selfish, childish, squealing, poorly-hygienic, lump of toad-shit?" her boyfriend seemed a bit put-off by her in-depth description of his past self. "It was only after her proved his courage, his selflessness, that I was enamored and allowed him to join me in a bubble bath, and fuck my brains out. But not when the moons are eclipsing, obviously. Otherwise we'd be back where we started."
"Uh, no actually, Isabel dear," Thadeous gave his girlfriend a dubious look. "The Fuckening only works when the maid is a virgin. Which, you, as if last week no longer are."
"Well if we'd fucked during the Fuckening while I was still a virgin, right after we completed that quest to remove that horrible chastity belt my witch mother placed upon me, then we might have ended up with a dragon. And it would probably have taken after his father and wanted to eat everything in sight."
"Well I suppose that would be better than taking after its mother, and just slaughtering the shit out of everything!"
"Okay," Red interrupted. "You two need some, like, marriage counseling, and I obviously need to get my head examined. Cuz at first I thought maybe my high was just coming back, or maybe blood loss or something, but now...I don't even know man. What the fuck?"
"Save my honor," Thadeous bellowed, his voice suddenly stretching and echoing. "Save your own."
The castle was speeding away, as if into some dark void.
"And maybe," Isabel's voice was distant, "someday, you'll get laid."
And Rufus's voice, finally echoing, sounding oddly like Patrick Stewart, "Oh Red, you've remembered my birthday! ...Did you eat my fucking cake?"
"Red?"
Red blinked widely.
He was back in his bathroom. The voice calling him was vaguely familiar, like someone he'd recently met.
"Red?"
It was Saul's friend, what was his name...and why was he in Red's house?
Better question: what the hell had just happened? Red couldn't remember. Someone had been telling him something about honor...and Rufus had been there, with a really impressive sounding voice...
They'd been trying to tell him something important. Something life-changing. He squinted, struggling to remember...
"Eh, fuck it."
He lifted the knife to lick off some frosting.
