Note: Yep. Chapter four on its way.
Chapter Four: Holy Flaming Cheese!
Ding-Dong!
Uncle Shadow jabs the doorbell hard with his index finger, almost breaking it.
There's no answer. He jabs the doorbell a few more times.
Ding dong ding dong ding dong ding dong!
"Alright, alright! I'm coming!"
Uncle Tails opens the door.
He's covered in oil and transmission fluid and God only knows what else.
"Hey Shadow. Scooter. Come on in. What's up?"
Uncle Shadow explains the situation, half-mumbling in embarrassment.
"Well, sure, you guys can stay here for a while. Just, y'know... stay away from my oven." Uncle Tails jokes, grinning.
Uncle Shadow rolls his eyes and groans at the lame joke.
I don't blame him. It was pretty lame, after all.
So now we've got our things in a room. Yeah, now we have to share a room. Fan-freaking-tastic. Do you know how much Uncle Shadow snores? He sounds like a fan-freaking-tastic lawnmower. A broken lawnmower. You know, one of those ones with the broken muffler thingy so it's extra-loud and shoots toxic exhaust into the air?
Yeah, I'm an environmentalist. Sue me. I don't like things that harm the environment. That's why you'll see me going around school with a biodegradable water bottle and a 100 percent recycled paper notebook.
That is, if I still went to school.
Ouch!
"Quit spacing, Scooter, and unpack your stuff." Uncle Shadow picks the hairbrush he threw at me out of my hair. It had connected with my skull and stuck in my quills.
I grumble as I unpack.
"Agh... Dammit! Ouch!"
"Watch that mouth of yours, Scooter." Uncle Shadow comments idly.
"Yeah, I'll get right on that, as soon as I dislodge my sleeve from this random broken tack in my suitcase."
"And that attitude. Watch that, or you're getting a Chaos Spear where the sun don't shine."
"Which is what, all of me?" I joke, as I spend as much time as humanly (or hedgehoggedly) possible indoors and far away from any semblance of sunlight.
"Watch it, you!" Uncle Shadow chucks the brush at me again, but I catch it with my free hand and hurl it back at him, hard enough that it lands with a loud TING in the wall behind him and sticks there, handle in the wall like a missile.
"Whoa. You've got quite the arm there."
I snap my head up to see Uncle Tails studying my throwing skills interestedly.
"Thanks. It seems to come in handy when I get angry. Must have got it from my mother, Dad could never throw like that." I comment distantly, shoving some random underpants in a drawer.
Damn tack ripped my sleeve. This is my favorite shirt, dammit!
"I actually noticed you're growing a little fringe of brown hair on you, there, Scoot." I take a quick peek in the mirror and confirm Uncle Tails' observation with a noncommittal sound.
"Mm, he's growing wings too." Uncle Shadow points out, poking at my vestigial batlike wings on my back, with a second pair of fluffy little raven-like wings below. I had to cut holes in all my shirts so they could flap and breathe without constricting me.
My mother was some sort of hybrid bat-hedgehog-weasel-raven-human-scorpion-wolf-alien-y thing. Oh, like I know what to call it! Shut up. As I was saying, she had features from many, many different animals and creatures, through generations upon generations of breeding between species. She was beautiful, from what I've been told (as she died when I was like, two or three or something), and could use all her features to her advantage. Up until I was about fourteen I didn't exhibit any of her traits but last year I started growing wings and brown hair. I usually kept them hidden under my clothes and a hat, which is why you nice people listening to me yammer on have never heard about them until now. But then my wings got too big and my hair got too long. I have this strange, irrational fear of sharp objects coming anywhere near my head. I've never gotten a haircut in my life. Uncle Shadow says it's a form of Aichmophobia, which is the fear of needles or pointed objects. That's great, now what's the one for specifically fear of pointy things near my soft and delicate skull?
But yeah, I kept them under my clothes and stuff. Made myself look just like my dad, cause God knows he was just so cool!
Don't want my friends thinking I'm a freak or anything. Ha! Being the son of Sonic the Hedgehog, being able to run at twice the speed of sound, being able to throw things hard enough to shatter walls, and let's not forget the big one, being bright freaking blue, oh no, I'm perfectly freaking normal.
I smack Uncle Shadow's hand away.
"Would you both quit noticing my physical features for a minute and leave me alone? Angsty teenage boy trying to unpack a suitcase, here." I snap. I push my glasses up higher on my nose and give them both an emerald death glare of teenagery doom.
Uncle Shadow slaps me in the back of the head. "Watch the attitude, you."
Ow. So you know what I'm gonna do now? Yeah.
"Scooter, you little--"
I smacked him in his big, stupid, black-and-red-quilled head.
"That's what you get for smacking a teenage boy, Uncle Shadow. You get smacked right back. You wanna try that again?"
"Oh, you just made a big mistake, you little brat!"
Uncle Tails pushes us apart and says, "You know, why don't you stay with me for a while, Scooter? Come on, I'll show you the new part to my biplane I'm working on."
He yanks me from the room hard, slamming the door before Uncle Shadow has a chance to use Chaos Spear.
We even heard him scream, "Disappear!" as soon as we shut the door, and we heard a series of loud THUNKS against the door.
"You wanna try that again Uncle? Maybe this time you can actually try to aim for me, you blind old geezer!" I call as I'm being dragged off.
"Scooter, seriously, calm down." Uncle Tails scolds.
"No!"
Uncle Tails wraps one of his incredibly handy and useful tails around my mouth and the other around my wrist to drag me along.
So now I'm making a muffled set of cursing noises, or at least it would be loud cursing if I didn't have a large, fluffy, yellow tail in my mouth. A tail covered in transmission fluid, which, you have to imagine, tastes pretty damn nasty.
The next long while is going to be pure hell.
