Characters and things referenced belong to their respective owners. I only own this fanfic and I used to own Knuckles' DS Lite.
Amy jumped out of the TARDIS, landing on her feet perfectly. The Doctor, seeing this, scowled at Amy and called her a show off under his breath. Rory decided to jump out too (I lied about him never being seen again) and landed rather unsuccessfully. He also called Amy a show off. Sadly for Rory, she heard this and beat the crap out of him with her shoe (she had taken it off. Jeez! Did you really think she was still wearing it?). Rory, now bored, stood up and looked at the Doctor.
"You didn't explain the concept of regeneration to us," he moaned at the Doctor. The Doctor whirled round and looked Rory in the eyes.
"I did and it can be weird at times. I had a friend once, back on Gallifrey, who accidentally regenerated into a potato. If there is some external force controlling the regenerative process, they were either having a laugh or were in a random mood. Silly Potato!" the Doctor reminisced.
"Potato?" Amy asked, trying not to laugh.
"That was his name: the Potato," the Doctor said sadly. "It makes his regeneration kinda ironic". He straightened his bowtie and wiped a tear from his eye.
"What happened to him?" Rory enquired.
"Nobody knows. After he regenerated, he just disappeared of the face of the planet. He may have been eaten but I'm not sure. He was cool," the Doctor replied.
"You think everything's cool, don'tcha?" Amy asked cheekily.
"NO I DO NOT!" the Doctor suddenly yelled. "I'm gonna sonic you for that!" He whipped his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and sonicked Amy with it. Rory watched Amy screaming in pain with a small smile on his face. At last, he was not the one who was dying or having the crap beaten out of him. He was Rory Williams, the Last Centurion. 100% pure undiluted badass. That was when he fell over. Amy had tied his shoelaces together when they were in the TARDIS.
While Amy was being tortured and Rory was squirming in pain, they didn't notice the person hiding behind the mushroom the TARDIS was parked on, playing a Nintendo DS. If Amy had played enough video games (specifically Sonic & Knuckles) she would have recognised the giant mushrooms they were surrounded by and she would have correctly surmised that they were in Mushroom Hill Zone, Angel Island. And as it was Angel Island, she would have naturally assumed that they were going to come across Knuckles the Echidna. Stupid Amy
Knuckles leaned against the mushroom, blissfully unaware of Team TARDIS. He looked at his DS and ejected the game card. It bounced off another mushroom and hit him in the face.
"Damn!" he exclaimed.
Amy turned round, her hair whipping the Doctor. He stopped sonicking her and tried to see where the exclamation had come from.
"Where's that noise coming from?" she asked.
"Dunno," Rory said, still on the floor. Amy stared at him in astonishment as she had forgotten that he was there. Rory unlaced his shoelaces and tied them properly and stood up. "I think I recognise this place"
"How can you?" Amy asked incredulously. "This is probably an alien planet"
"It could be if the Sonic games were set on a different planet," Rory replied.
"WE'RE IN A VIDEO GAME?"Amy shrieked. Knuckles, still hidden behind the mushroom, snorted with laughter.
"I seriously doubt it," Rory reasoned, trying not to giggle at Amy's reaction. "Mushroom Hill Zone was on a 16-bit console so if we are actually inside Sonic the Hedgehog 3, we'd have noticed pixels by now and STOP LAUGHING, KNUCKLES!"
"How long did you know I was there for?" Knux asked, stepping into Amy and Rory's view, slightly put off and fully aware that Amy and the Doctor were staring at him.
"I heard clicking noises behind us. Is that a DS?" Rory calmly said. Knuckles handed the black Nintendo DS Lite to Rory. It had several faded foil stickers on it, mostly depicting cute bunnies and on the back there was a large foil sticker with two puppies on it. Rory flipped the DS's lid open and experimentally pressed a few of the buttons. All of them bar the shoulder buttons worked perfectly. He gave the DS back to Knuckles with a smile.
"Like puppies much?" Amy said as she had been watching Rory and the DS over his shoulder.
"Cream put the stickers on, not me," Knux sighed. "The only console I own that hasn't been defaced by her is my SNES"
"You own an SNES?" Amy exclaimed.
"Yes. Why do you care?" Knux responded.
"What part of console wars do you not understand?" Amy screamed at him. "You belong to Sega and the SNES is Nintendo. You are enemies!"
"Amy," Rory said tentatively. "The console wars are over and Nintendo and Sega are friends now"
"What?" Amy shrieked in disbelief. "I preferred it when Mario and Sonic were fighting"
"I didn't really care about the console wars," Knux said, looking at the floor. "I'm not Sega's mascot, I'm just the 4th most popular character from the Sonic games"
"So you are aware of the fourth wall?" Rory asked.
"What fourth wall?" Knux inquired. "Hello person who is reading this crack fic". He smiled brightly and stared at the Doctor for no apparent reason. Yes, dear reader, there is no fourth wall! :D
Sorry for the mostly Doctor Who based chapter. The next one will be more Sonicky (Is that a word?)
