The Purple Penny Returns!
Chapter 3: Microsoft's Dungeon
Uh... Sorry I haven't updated in a while, I had other things to tend to.
Ech: And people didn't vote. Not that TTE blames you, it's because the Sonic section gets updated really, really fast, while Spyro and Mario aren't quite so...
Antiech: Evil?
Roo: No. So now let's get out of the cliffhanger before someone destroys the planet.
Wex: Whoa, whoa, Roo, TTE hasn't given out the disclaimer yet.
Oh, fine. I guess I'll do my own for once. I don't own Spyro the Dragon, Sonic the Hedgehog, or Super Mario. I just made this story up to be here. Uh, happy anniversary to Spyro and Elora too. At least according to my fanfic universe.
Antiroo: And from now on, TTE will put up the chapter in the section of the character who has the most action in the chapter. Like last chapter ended with Sonic's Chaos Control, which Sonic fans would know more about (unless they haven't played through Sonic Adventure 2 yet). Okay, no more comedic explanation, we have a cliffhanger to de-cliffhanger-ize.
The six heroes from the world outside Microsoft hung in its dungeon, suspended on the wall by chains. At least, all of them except for Sonic and Knuckles. Sonic was chained to an iron ball so heavy that he couldn't even move it if he was in his super form, while Knuckles sat with his arms locked in the wall, unable to move them to dig anyone else from their chains.
"Great job, Hedgehog." Spyro yelled at Sonic while he flamed his own chains again. "You've got a real knack for this, don't you?" Sonic wasn't going to take much more of Spyro's complaining, though, and retaliated finally. "Oh, sure, it's not like you volunteered to get rid of those robots back up there!"
While Sonic and Spyro argued, their two partners weren't taking their imprisonment as well as any of the others. "Need... Caffeine!" Hunter kept shouting at random times, while Knuckles' sixth sense for the Chaos Energy contained in the emeralds was going crazy. "I know it's here. I know it. I just haven't found it. It's here. It has to be!" Each time he tried to break away from the wall to try to dig for it, he sprung right back at the wall and continued his fight. Mario and Luigi hung in silence for a while as the rest of them kept to arguing and yelling, but even Luigi couldn't handle it after too long.
"Would everyone just shut-a up?!" he yelled, getting everyone's attention. "Listen, if we all-a pull together, there must-a be a way for us-a to escape this-a dungeon."
"How..." Knuckles gasped as he rested from his insane search for the near source of the Chaos Energy. "How could you think we could escape this dungeon without any of our stuff? Microsoft has the seven Chaos Emeralds." Knuckles got even angrier with each word, his purple eyes burning with rage. "I don't even have the Master Emerald to stop them anymore!"
A Microsoft guard walked by the cell where the six were, stopping Knuckles from continuing his rant and creating an utter silence throughout the dungeon. After he had passed, Sonic spoke up. "Knuckles, there's just one thing: Microsoft doesn't have all seven Emeralds."
Knuckles looked straight at Sonic for a second, realizing there was only two possibilities. "Tails didn't give us the real yellow Chaos Emerald, did he?" Sonic shook his head and brought out his own blue Chaos Emerald. Mario dropped his jaw when he saw the blue Emerald glowing brightly in Sonic's hand. "But-a how?"
"Nobody asked you how you beat Bowser all those times, so who's up for another adventure?"
Sonic handed over the Emerald to Knuckles, who used its immense power to release himself from his bonds. After that, Mario got the Emerald, and used its power to bounce himself off the wall. "Mama mia, what a rush-a!" Luigi was next, taking the Emerald and doing a tornado spin to remove himself from the wall. Hunter followed, using the Emerald as a substitute for his caffeine and pulling his chains right off the wall. Only Sonic and Spyro remained stuck to the dungeon. "Sonic, I think I can melt your chains if you can get me off of this wall." Spyro told the hedgehog. Sonic took the Emerald in his own hand, and throwing the caution of the Time Sweepers capturing them again to the wind, shouted the two words he learned from Shadow. "CHAOS CONTROL!" Within an instant, Spyro was freed from his carbon- bound chains and could freely flame Sonic's. Sonic reappeared standing on top of his metal ball just as Spyro dropped to the ground, holding the blue Emerald in his hand. "Whoa, didn't know if I could do that."
Sonic waited for Spyro to melt away the chain, answering the question that Hunter posed to him. "If you could do that and get all the way over there within two seconds, how come you couldn't just get outta here on your own?"
"Remember the cats who put you in here?" Everyone shook their head no. "Oh, right, I was moving in frozen time then. You must've thought that right after I vanished we all appeared here."
Mario stood by the door, acting as lookout while the other five made up their plans. As soon as they found their way out of here, they would get all of their stuff back and get to Bill Gates to have a talk with him. "Sonic! Look at where we are! Microsoft's not stupid! They wouldn't put all seven Emeralds together unless they were going to use them immediately!"
"The guard's-a coming!" Mario yelled, alerting his friends. The six jumped back to their spots on the wall as the guard passed by, and after he was gone, they slowly crept over to open the door. Sonic had seen the hallway before, as he was carried in to the cell with the others. He had come from their left, and as the Time Sweepers released him from the stopped time of Chaos Control, he saw them take the other six Chaos Emeralds, the Power Stars, the Orbs, and the Master Emerald to the right.
"All right, guys, that way's the exit," Sonic told them while pointing left, "and that's where they took the Emeralds, Orbs, and Stars." All six of them followed Sonic down the hallway, stopping at a fork where three separate paths split from the main one. Each had Microsoft's distinctive Xbox logo above it, and through them, the paths stretched out as far as anyone could see.
"Sonic, I feel the Emeralds down there." Knuckles said as he pointed down the path to their right. Sonic agreed with him, holding the blue Chaos Emerald out in front of him. He remembered his friend Tails' speech: The Chaos Emeralds are like magnets...They have the power to attract each other. I can use that to find where Eggman is. Sure enough, the blue Emerald started to pull Sonic closer to the path Knuckles chose. "Well then, the vote's unanimous. Me and Knuckles'll take that path."
Luigi and Mario were deciding which of the two remaining paths they'd choose, looking at each and seeing no difference at all. They looked momentarily at the one that Knuckles and Sonic had gone down, seeing that the Xbox logo had instead become a logo for the pair's first outing together: Sonic & Knuckles–the game. "Luigi, look-a up!" Sure enough, the Xbox logo above the hallway had changed to one of Mario's red M and Luigi's green L. The two took that way, hoping that it wasn't a trap made by Microsoft. Only Spyro and Hunter remained, and since the others were on the other two paths already, they chose the middle. They would now have to find their stuff, as well as a way out of there.
Sonic & Knuckles
Sonic and Knuckles ran through the hallway, dodging traps set years before to stop anyone from escaping from the dungeon to leak valuable information to Microsoft's former foes, such as Apple. But the dungeon walls didn't only hold booby traps. No, instead, Sonic and Knuckles stumbled across a sad looking soul, a talking paper clip, who was trying to escape the dungeon himself. "You–You–You're Sonic the Hedgehog..." it said.
"And who are you, some kind of Microsoft guinea pig?" Knuckles asked. Obviously he cared more for the Master Emerald than anything else, including a life so damaged as this one. The paper clip only looked down towards the floor. "No. I was the first one attacked by the Purple Penny. I went insane when it knocked me in the back; I attacked every other office assistant," the paper clip recalled, thinking back to his own battle scene. "I was on someone's home computer, a kid was typing up an essay for English. He depended on us to find errors in the typing so that he wouldn't fail. But just when he was about to print it out... his document became a battleground. First went my best friend, the Dot, who always was able to stop the kid's run-ons... I'll always remember him."
"Listen, I'm sure that your story is sad, but we just don't have time to hear it." "Relax, Knuckles, we can take him with us." Sonic picked up the paper clip and began to run, followed by Knuckles. "My name's Clippit, by the way." Sonic kept running down the hallway, seeing the bright light ahead. "There it is, Knuckles, the way outta here!"
"All right, now we'll be able to find the Master Emerald!" Knuckles followed Sonic into the light, stopping just inches from where Sonic stood inside. "What the heck, Sonic?"
"Look." Sonic pointed ahead of him, at the entire Green Hill Zone.
Spyro & Hunter
Spyro and Hunter ran down their own corridor, seeing that ahead of them was a bottomless pit. Hunter, being the one who kept everyone from actually being serious, ran to its edge and looked down. Quoting one of his favorite websites, he only said one thing. "When you fall in a bottomless pit, you die of starvation."
"Hunter, there's a fine line between funny and morbid."
"Well, sorry, Spyro, I was just joking." Hunter looked around to see if there was a way–any way–across this pit. He saw only one way: he would have to shoot an arrow and a rope across the pit to get himself and Spyro across. He took an arrow out of his quiver just as Spyro looked over at him. "Hunter, what the heck are you doing?" Hunter answered him just as he got the arrow ready to fire. "I'm shooting an arrow across the pit, there has to be a way across!"
"You know, it would help a lot if there was a rope attached to that."
"Oh, yeah." Hunter finally got his arrow prepared, and shot it clear across the pit and into darkness. He heard it take hold in a wall with a ping, and pulled the rope taught. Sticking another arrow in the ground, he secured the rope for him and Spyro to climb across. "I feel like a secret agent." Hunter said with a grin. The two completed their Bond-like climb and Hunter again took out his arrows.
"Jeez, now what are you doing with that?" Spyro asked as he let go of the rope. Instead of an answer, Hunter shoved the arrow he had just put in the bow at Spyro's face. "I'm making sure nobody else can get across. Here, can ya breathe fire on this so it'll burn the rope?"
Spyro reluctantly breathed fire on the arrow, starting it on fire. "Now I feel like the Hero of Time." Spyro watched him take the arrow back to fire, saying to himself. "Then maybe I'll get you a green tunic for your birthday." Hunter aimed the arrow at the far end of the rope, pulling it back even further. Any further and he'd– "Augh! My hand! Ohhh!" Hunter dropped the burning arrow and bow and started sucking on his burned hand.
"Hunter, from now on leave the pyrotechnics to me." Spyro burned the near end of the rope as Hunter followed him through the door at the hall's end. Through it, Spyro and Hunter shielded their eyes at the sudden bright sunlight. Before them they saw a place which only Spyro recognized. "What's going on, Spyro? Where the heck are we?"
"I remember this place, but I haven't been here for more than five years." Spyro thought back to his first adventure with a smile on his face. "It's Stone Hill."
Mario & Luigi
Mario and Luigi ran down their own hallway, but not quite as far as the other two ran down theirs. Instead of having a doorway at the end of their hall, all they could see was that they were inside of a huge tower. Luigi was the first to notice, however. "Mama mia, look at-a that." Mario craned his neck to look at the ceiling, but he could barely see it, it was so high up. "Wow, that's-a gotta be like-a thirty feet! How are we-a gonna get up-a there?" Luigi looked at Mario with a cruel smile on his face. "Oh no, you're-a not gonna make me go up-a there!"
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"I can't believe you're-a actually gonna make me go up-a there."
"Oh, come-a on, Mario, you-a know that we've-a gotta get outta here." Luigi insisted while he gave Mario a boost onto the wall. Since some of the bricks were sticking out on one wall, Mario would climb up them first to make sure that it was safe. Mario grabbed the first brick, pulling it slightly to make sure it wouldn't fall out on him. When it didn't, Mario pulled himself up and to the next brick, relieving Luigi's head of his weight. Mario slowly made his way up the wall, stopping every few minutes to regain his footing. "Come-a on, Mario, you haven't even gone-a up two-a feet!" Sure enough, when Mario looked down, Luigi was right there. 'Two feet?' he thought, 'I've surely gone up at least three!' Let's-a go, Mario, or I'll-a tell Nintendo all about how-a every one of your-a adventures was a total lie!
Facing complete video game humiliation, Mario renewed his resolve and once more began his ascent. He wouldn't stop again until he had reached the top now. 'I-a have-a to get up-a there! I know I can-a do it!' Mario grunted as he pulled himself onto a sort of ledge formed by the pulled out bricks. He sighed. At least he was almost halfway there. He started to go up again, climbing like he did during the first leg of his climb, when suddenly, the brick he grabbed came out with his hand. "Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa! Mama mia, help-a me!" Mario hung by his one hand as he saw the brick fall to the ground below and shatter into a million pieces. He began to slip from the one brick he had his other hand on, trying with all his might to grab it with his other hand, at least temporarily. He reached out at it with his eyes closed, hoping that this wouldn't be his doom, when suddenly, a hand grabbed him.
"Don't-a worry, Mario, I've-a gotcha!" Luigi was above him, hanging down and pulling Mario to him. Mario let go of the brick while Luigi pulled him up, shivering in fear, to the top of the wall. "Luigi, how-a did you-a get up-a here?"
"There was-a an elevator." Luigi stated proudly as Mario got up. "I-a took it after you-a had already gotten half-a-way. Come on, let's-a go get Bill Gates!"
But while they aimed to get to Gates' office, the door they took, the only door at the tower's top, led them somewhere that Mario never thought he'd see again. Donkey Kong was holding Peach hostage above a construction site!
"Mama mia," Mario said, "I-a remember this place! This-a was the place I-a faced him twenty years ago!"
Roo: Now I'll say it. Ooh! Cliffhangery!
Antiroo: You don't sound very enthusiastic, Roo. What's wrong?
Roo: I guess I'm just tired of doing this every chapter. Hey, TTE, is it all right if I take a little vacation?
Go ahead, Roo. In fact, you all can have a vacation if you want. At least for two chapters.
Platypous: Well, I'm off to pack my pudding! Don't forget to review even if we're not here! See you later!