Live and Learn/Die and Don't Learn

by Stuart Strachan aka Final Messenger

Sonic sat in the pouring 2D rain, numb. Shadow, his arch nemesis, that "fake hedgehog", was dead. But Sonic, being the most sentient rodent ever spare Dangermouse, was sad; all Shadow had wanted was to be with his oddly human love, Maria, whose name he was unable to pronounce. He muttered something to himself in English, but his funny Japanese accent made everyone on the other side of the Dreamcast laugh. Sonic had a strange habit of making best friends with his arch enemies. It was a fault he lamented. First Knuckles, now Shadow. He also feared he was passing it on to Tails; he had overheard him engaging in inaudible subtitle-less banter with Eggman after the Earth was saved. "I hope Tails won't become my archenemy," thought Sonic to himself in Spanish, for some plank had bought the Euro version and flicked the language over.

Well, well, well. Sonic would soon be wishing he had never uttered those Hispanic words in his shiny, poorly textured head. Tails, doing a round of shopping in the local human marketplace, contemplating peacefully to himself the way in which the humans accepted him for what he was, a freak of nature with two tails and the ability to talk, suddenly felt his eyes flash red. Bizarrely, nobody around him noticed. The were obeying the first rule of the X-files; "All superfluous characters before the credits come up must not act suspiciously if they see anything fur-reakin' weird happen and must accept death gracefully, for you cannot go on together with suspicious minds." Suddenly you know Tails has turned evil. So I might as well not say it. But I will anyway. "It". Haha old joke etc ahem.

"Looks like I'll have to kill Sonic now!" said Anakin, uh, I mean Tails (Who turned on that atrocious English voice acting?!).

Tails, now driven with the sole intent to kill Sonic, met his Nintendo arch rival, Luigi. "Hello-a Tails!" he said, "are-a you jealous of me? I got-a my own game and a half-decent non-Star Wars related voice actor. And-a what do you have? An awful new plot line to turn evil and-a brutally kill Sonic in a vain attempt to make Sega more adult orientated, huh? We'd-a never see you in a beat 'em up" Tails followed by saying something angrily in Japanese. The subtitles read: "Don't worry, Luigi, I love you really and want to give you a hug." But according to a hardcore literal translations page somewhere on the net Tails had in fact said: "Up yours, Luigi. You could never have truly said that. All that dialogue would not have fit on a paltry Gamecube disc. I had my own game on the Game Gear ages ago, Tails Adventures, if you must know. And at least Sega could be arsed to get of their arses and include top-notch Japanese voice acting with Adventure 2, unlike your pathetic "Maaaarriioooooo!" and text crap. This new plot line might be unoriginal, but you are in it, you hypocrite. And I was in a Sonic beat 'em up years before Smash Bros. was a kernel of memory on Shigsy's dev-kit. And as for Sega being more adult orientated, we're not the ones censoring Skies of Arcadia and we don't have Pikachu or Animal Forest or crap-graphic cartoon Zeldas or games with Sunshine in the title. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, fucker." Now if that isn't adult-orientated then I don't know what is. "Hey hey hey, wait a minute while I feed my Tamogotchi, Sega and Nintendo are best of friends now, look!" said a disturbingly sickly sweet voice of reason. It only turned out to be Geoffrey from Rainbow, for crying out loud. He produced a photo of Nagoshi-san and Miyamoto-san shaking hands. "You're friends now," he said. "But I'm evil now, you god awful excuse for a children's TV presenter!" shouted Tails before fatally wounding Geoffrey, much to the approval of the Rainbow-hating crowd outside the Dreamcast. As for Luigi, he sunk into his brother's shadow for real after an Elite read one too many cliched Mario- Luigi relationship magazine quotes.

Sonic looked up after staring at his badly drawn mouth in a puddle and saw Tails standing there. Being a hedgehog, he was near-blind, despite having massive eyes and being a non-superfluous character, so he could not notice Tails' glowing red eyes. "Fuck you, you bastard," said Tails softly to Sonic. Sonic, being an ever-child friendly character, died instantly of shock. To celebrate his victory, Tails' awful theme tune was played to the torture of those poor folk on the other side of the Dreamcast. "Just wanna be like hi-iiiii-im!" rang the saccharine sweet almost shonen ai lyrics. "Oh, of course," thought Tails, "I just wanna be like him," he said forlornly, looking down at his roadkill. And with that, he produced a noose from his backside and hung himself from a flat Konami tree that looked at him not matter which way he went.

A drunken Knuckles stumbled across the two bodies later that night. Puking on Sonic, he was glad those disgusting creatures had finally been laid to rest after years of awful sound tracks. In celebration, he played his own Craig-esque rap music on his way to Eggman's ridiculously titled Panic Puppet Zone. When he got there he shagged Eggman up the bum, like all you Eggman x Knuckles fanfic weirdoes will no doubt be pleased to hear.

THE END