Muffet the spider monster could endure extended periods of time without food, waiting for some hapless Migosp or uppity Loox to wander into one of the many webs she maintained, at various clever and unexpected locations throughout the underground. Albeit she would rather not, if only it could be helped, let more than a week pass between two meals. Spider tea and spider donuts are nothing compared to a shriveled up husk or two for brunch, after all.
After almost a month she had begun to take her anger out on her spiderlings, by way of passive aggressively uttered insults about their short stature, their inability to spin webs, or hold down any decent paying job, at times even threatening to use them to flavor her tea (although she would never really), to the extent that they spent all waking hours rustling up all that they could to try to quell her hunger. However, no amount of dirt worms or naturally occurring sugar cubes could ever satiate her. The catch needed to be something more...substantial.
This predicament continued until one day, her next victim came like a blue blur; moving faster than any set of eight eyes could follow, but not fast enough to tear through one of her satellite webs. The web in question was stretched between two innocuous smooth rock formations, next to a vein of water that had once been quite popular among the lesser beings of the underground, until they became all too aware of the spider queen's malicious, looming presence in the area.
Sonic the hedgehog, being new to those parts, must not have gotten the memo.
"What's this crazy spider web doing here?" The super fast hedgehog squirmed and twisted his body this way and that, but whenever it felt like he could almost pull an arm or leg away from the sticky web, it would snap back, only further exhausting himself in the process. "Knuckles, help!"
The crimson Adobe after effect to Sonic's blue blur, Knuckles the Echidna, was walking to the sandy shore of the underground river, apparently oblivious to Sonic's plight. Rather, something else had caught his attention, in the light of the lantern he held in one gigantic gloved hand.
"Are those..." The unfocused echidna gasped, kneeling down to collect pieces of varying colored crystal that glimmered in the sand. "Chaos emerald shards?"
He could still hear Sonic's distant pleas: "Quit playing around and get me out of this thing!" But ignored them.
Knuckles retrieved a glass pipe held together with duct tape and a lighter from his knapsack, then with great urgency proceeded to pluck some of the shards from the sand and drop them into the pipe one by one, until it was about a quarter full. Once satisfied with the amount, he flicked the lighter until it produced a flame, then held it with some space between the source of heat and the bottom of his trusty crack pipe, drawing the ensuing vapors all at once into his nostrils with a medley of groans, and coos, to express his sheer, verging on orgasmic glee.
Muffet's minions, meanwhile, trickled down the Hedgehog possessed web and injected their fangs' worth of sedative venom into the squirming SEGA mascot. This lulled him to sleep faster than Knuckles would have realized that the sand crack he was smoking was indeed whack, if he had had any standards to begin with.
The spiderlings proceeded to carry Sonic across the network of web highways that, much like how it is said all roads lead to Rome, all linked back to one precious parlor in particular – the Hotland home of their mother.
I can't let them do this, Sonic consciously thought, caught within the liquid span between being awake and dreaming, while lucid enough to feel intensely violated by the constant scratching of their minuscule bristly hairs against his approximately three-spiked hide.
I have to find Amy, before it's too late!