"Your task was very simple. I gave you a clearly-labelled form to fill out, an extensive set of rules to abide by, and a generous amount of advice. I then left you alone for two hours, and in retrospect that may have been a mistake."

"Y'know, we haven't actually shown you our characters yet."

Shadow looked up from his DM screen. "I know. I'm preparing myself for the worst."

"If I didn't know any better, Shads, I'd say you don't trust us."

He looked around the table. Sonic was relaxing, casually tossing his dice, and already interrupting him, all of which were, most likely, very bad signs. Tails was holding his sheet slightly nervously, rereading it as if he hadn't probably memorised the player's manual already. Knuckles seemed more sure of himself, but even from this angle, Shadow could see that his spelling was atrocious. Amy was smiling pleasantly enough, but she was a wild card. And Rouge was perfectly confident, which, in this context, was definitely a very bad sign.

"I don't. Now, let's get this part over with. Introduce yourselves."

Sonic straightened up. "Ok! So I made a manticore sword fighter – yeah, didn't really want to deal with all the complicated stuff."

"You didn't really want to deal with all the complicated stuff, and you picked a manticore? You do realise they have both natural weapons and a flight speed, right?"

"Those are complicated? I picked it 'cause I thought they were cool." Sonic didn't look discouraged. "Well, I'll figure it out!"

Shadow resisted the urge to headdesk. "Let's just move on. We'll go clockwise. Amy?"

"Ah. I... might have also made a manticore?" He gave in to the urge. "She's a paladin, with an axe and buffing magic."

"At least you have some semblance of support. Tails?"

"Actually, I sort of had the same thought, so I went for a healing cleric. I picked kitsune for my race -" Tails looked down in a strange kind of annoyance, "- since apparently that's a thing you can be in this."

"So, that makes three of you with unusual races." Admittedly, Shadow did trust him with this a little more than those other two – and at least they had a healer. "Rouge?"

She looked up. "Oh, imp rogue."

"That's it? Just an imp rogue?"

"Yep. With a knife." Shadow suddenly recognised her expression as plotting, and feared slightly for the kids at the table. "They wouldn't happen to be chaotic neutral, would they?"

"Mm-hmm."

"... Knuckles?"

"Well, apparently wizards get a lot of powerful stuff, so I picked one. Built him for throwing fireballs."

"What race?"

"Elemental. They're good for wizards, right? Storm, because they're the strongest."

This was a bad idea.

"SETUP COMPLETE. MAY I BEGIN ROLEPLAYING, SHADOW?"

A/N As it turns out, I have a lot of random ideas for scenes, so I figured I may as well write them down. I may end up taking inspiration for stories from some of these, or even turning them into full fics. We'll see!