THE FINE PRINT: If you want to find out who owns what and such, then please
refer to the Prolouge for the jibber-jabber. By the way, to all the lawyers
reading this: Is it true that you have nothing better to do than read
fanfiction such as this one? Why do all of you carry the exact same kinds
of briefcases? Is it possible that a lawyer somewhere in the world likes
Pez candy? Do any of you ever pretend you're an airplane? I do. I run
around in circles and say "ZOOOOOM!" It's fun, try it sometime! Can you
snort Jell-O up your noses? I once saw someone do that. Would I get sent to
jail for killing an ant with an ear of corn? 'Cause if I can, YOU'LL NEVER
GET ME! YOU'VE GOT NOTHING ON ME, YOU HEAR?? NOTHING!!! Ahem. Er, sorry
about that.
CAUTION! The Crossover Saga has a low occurrence of side effects, including uncontrollable laughing and crying as well as the sudden, intense urge to eat fuzzy pickles. Don't ask your doctor before switching from other fanfiction to The Crossover Saga. While adjusting to the change, you might not be able to cope as well with renegade staplers taking over your living room. If you are nursing, pregnant or may become pregnant, go ahead and read the story anyway. I'm not stopping you.
~End!~
(No actual ants were harmed in the making of this Fine Print.)
Random Irritated Reader: Let's get on with the friggin' story already!
Crossover Saga A Fanfiction by Stoney (stoney107@yahoo.com)
Chapter 11---Bankruptcy
Stoney: WHAT?! I'm bankrupt?!? NOOOOO!!!
(Just kidding, everyone! Here's the REAL title.)
Chapter 11---Disaster
"You don't know what you've got 'till it's gone....."
--Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi
Bowser's Castle, 2:03 PM.
Breathe. In. Out.
Loud sound. Floor shake. Wall shake. Ceiling shake.
Sound stop. Shake stop.
Breathe. In. Out.
......what happen?
Come out of shadows, look around.
AAH! Light! Too much! Too bright!
Retreat into shadows. Darkness...better. Feel better.
Breathe. In. Out.
Need more darkness. What do...?
.......wait for more darkness, then strike.
Breathe. In. Out.
-----------------------------------
Kraig let out a monster yawn as he stretched the kinks out of his muscles. 'What a boring day', he mused to himself. Leaning against the shut door behind him, he lazily crossed his arms over his chest and gazed at the world through half-closed eyes.
A few minutes passed, and he gave another quick glance around the area. Nothing new there; The hallway outside the Central Control Room was as empty as ever. It made a 90-degree turn, and the door to the room behind him sat on the outermost wall of it, right next to the corner. One of the gas-powered torches on the eastern wall kept going out--he'd have to get someone to look at that. Occasionally another Koopa guard would pass by, talking lightly of how uneventful their shifts had been. Other than that, there was nothing of interest going on.
Kraig was toying with the idea of taking a lunch break when he heard an odd sort of banging noise come from the other side of the door he was leaning on. He opened his eyes and stood up, wondering if Mario was invading the fortress again. He disregarded the idea at once-how could the plumber have gotten past him into the room he was guarding when he'd been standing in front of its only opening? He quickly unhooked a spear from his shell, brandishing it in front of him like a sword. 'Might as well be prepared in case something happened,' he decided.
The banging sound was growing louder. By now, Kraig could definitely tell it was coming from inside the Central Control room. The only person in there at this time was Kamek, he knew. Perhaps the Magikoopa was having some computer trouble?
Kraig glanced at his watch. Almost time for the next shift to start. Maybe he should let the next assigned guard take care of this problem...he began to walk down the corridor and away from the room. The action saved his life.
"I HATE COMPUTERS!" Someone screamed, their muffled voice echoing randomly off the walls. Startled, Kraig glanced back at the door he'd been standing in front of as the voice screamed again:
"BOLT 4!"
A large explosion from within the Central Control Room disintegrated the door. Kraig's eyes widened. 'Holy crap, what's going on?!' He frantically thought as he started running back to the post he'd just left.
"I HATE THEM!!"
A red glow emitted from the Control Room's dark depths. Kraig screeched to a halt with a gasp as he recognized what was about to happen, then spun around 180 degrees and began running down the hallway in the opposite direction.
"FIRE 2!"
Numerous spheres of flame erupted from the doorway and flew down the hall towards Kraig. The Koopa guard had all of two seconds to dive out of the way and hide in his shell before the weapons of mass destruction soared past him with inches to spare. A couple seconds later, the fires sizzled out as they hit the end of the hallway.
"DAMN THEM ALL TO HELL!" The angry voice screamed. Kraig heard a soft humming sound, getting louder and more high-pitched as something charged up. He cringed in preparation for what would come next.
"METEOR!!!"
Though Kraig did not see it, a brilliant flash of light illuminated the opening into the Central Control Room for a split second, followed shortly by a brief but loud booming sound. A concussion of hot air blasted out of the room, blowing out the light-giving candles of the corridor outside.
The area plunged into darkness. Kraig didn't dare look out to see what was going on, but he could feel himself being tossed about by the incredible force of the winds rushing around him. He shut his eyes tight and wished for it to be over. He couldn't see where he was going, didn't know what was happening. It was a nightmare--a nightmare that he couldn't wake up from.
Two jolts rattled through him as he bounced to a stop. The noise of rushing winds subsided. All went still.
Kraig slowly peeked his head out of his shell. Blackness greeted him, darker than the darkest night. He stood up and glanced around. There was nothing but black around him-he couldn't see a thing. The air was thick and smelled strongly of smoke. He gave a small cough and strained to see anything--anything at all. Nothing appeared to him. It was like being blind.
He reached down to an emergency utility belt strapped around his waist. There was a small flashlight attached to it, in case the gas supply for the torches ever went out. He fumbled with the latch for a few seconds before he finally managed to get it unhooked and turned it on.
The yellowish beam revealed what had once been the Control Room's doorway, now nothing more than bits and pieces of charred debris and broken stone. A massive hole in the wall bled smoke out into the hallway. Kraig frowned. What had just happened?
Someone called out his name. Kraig turned and shined the flashlight behind him, showing a group of Koopa guards running toward him. He recognized them all--they patrolled the areas near this one and were friends of his. A couple of them waved to him, and he waved back.
Kraig turned his flashlight back to the scene in front of him as his companions arrived, panting from their run. Kraig took another careful sniff of the air. Apart from the stench of smoke, the distinct scent of gas was also apparent.
His friends must've noticed it too, because one of them spoke up. "I dare ya to light a match in here," one joked. "What happened? I heard this loud sound, like somebody'd tossed a cement truck off the top floor."
"I'm not sure." Kraig replied slowly. "Mr. Kamek?" He called out, trying to peer through the smoke at the Control Room. "Mr. Kamek, are you all right?"
A guard trained her flashlight on the hole, which was still pouring out smoke. "Whoa! Kamek was in there?!" She exclaimed.
"Looks like a bomb went off, or something..." Another Koopa muttered.
Kraig took another step forward, calling out into the darkness again. "Mr. Kamek? Hello? Dang smoke, I can't see a thing in there." Indeed, the smoke swallowed up their flashlights' beams like a dense fog, preventing any clear visibility of what lay inside.
A cold wind began to pick up in the hallway, sweeping the smoke towards the group until it surrounded them. "Hey, what's this?" One guard exclaimed.
The wind grew stronger; swirling the thick fumes around them, choking them, smothering them. Kraig wrapped an arm around himself to ward off the biting cold that was carried in the breeze, and shivered. He couldn't hardly see his own hand in front of his face, even when he shined his fashlight on it. His guard companions were lost within the dense fog. Luckily, he could still hear their voices. Then a thought occurred to him.
How come there was a wind blowing INSIDE the fortress?
At that moment the smoke seemed to part like the Red Sea before Kraig's eyes. He stepped forward again a tiny bit, raising his flashlight in a feeble attempt to reveal what lay in the dark. "M.....M-Mr. Kamek?"
From deep within the darkness, two eyes ignited.
Someone stepped out from the Central Control Room, and Kraig stumbled back in fear as he saw it. The beam from his flashlight was abruptly cut off at two feet in front of the creature; it's form radiated an aura of dark energy that no light could penetrate. Two glowing pupils that might have been framed by glasses glowed a bright red with rage.
"WHAT." Kamek growled, wand held at the ready.
Kraig struggled to form words--his throat seemed to have stopped working. "Um...is t-there some sort-t of prob-b-blem, s-s-sir??"
For some reason, this question seemed to push Kamek's temper beyond its' limit. With a roar not unlike Bowser's, Kamek pointed his wand at Kraig and snarled out a spell. A flash of magical light, and the hapless guard burst into flames.
That was all the incentive the other guards needed to drop their weapons and run. Screaming in pain, Kraig dropped his flashlight and fled down the hallway after his fellow Koopas. The flames cast odd shadows onto the stone walls as he retreated from sight, eventually vanishing around another bend in the stone hallway.
Kamek stood in the same position for several minutes afterward, taking deep breaths and trying to calm down. Finally the aura of darkness around him abated, and his eyes returned to normal. With an almost casual flick of his wrist, he dissipated the gas and smoke while relighting the torches in the hallway.
He sighed and put his wand away, pausing only to pick up the forgotten flashlight on the floor in front of him. 'Well, that's item # 451 on the list of major screw-ups today,' he thought wryly. 'Dang, I used up way too much MP. I've still got enough for maybe one or two more spells, but that's it.'
Kamek took off his glasses and wearily rubbed his eyes. Things just weren't going well for him lately. How many times had he told Bowser in the past that he hated machines? He'd lost count of the number. Yet for some unfathomable reason, the Koopa king had decided to put him in charge of the castle's security systems not two days earlier.
Kamek hated computers above all other machines--he'd much rather use magic to achieve his ends instead of relying on untrustworthy piles of metal to do the job for him. Yet for some reason, he was an exceptional programmer..and it was because of this that Bowser had stuck him with the job of overseeing the maintenance and security systems in the castle.
The systems were all run from one source, which was the large supercomputer in the room behind him. It was incredibly powerful, but not even the best CPU in the world would be able to help him with the new problem he'd been presented with.
Heaving a deep sigh that would break anyone's heart, Kamek slowly turned to trudge back into the torture room of disobedient circuitry.
-------------------------------
"Okay people, listen up!" The Shy Guy leader of Squadron Alpha barked, shifting the white mask on his face as he spoke. "We've gotten a report of some trouble in the West sector. Normally we'd get there through the main route, but something made a big hole in the ceiling over there and caused a collapse, so that way's blocked off."
Alarm swept through the ranks of Shy Guys standing in front of the leader as whispers broke out among them. The leader held his arms up to quiet them down before continuing.
"Now the only other route I can think of that'll get us there in time to give any sort of help, is the Old Coal."
Murmurs of disagreement responded almost immediately to this. "The Old Coal?!" One Shy Guy burst out. "Nobody uses that route anymore! We're not even sure if it's still safe!"
"Then we'll find out for sure, won't we?" the Leader glared. "Look, I don't want to do this any more than you do. But I have my orders. We're to get to the West sector using the quickest means possible, and that means going through Old Coal. So let's stop grumbling and get on with it! March!"
The Murmurs continued, but the ranks of soldiers obeyed.
----------------------------------
After several minutes of struggling to breathe through the fumes coming from the princesses' sewage-soaked dresses, Kirby finally suggested that the two get cleaned up. The princesses were all for the idea, but neither of them knew where the restrooms were.
Luckily, Kirby remembered seeing such a restroom when Kapi was guiding him and Mario through the castle. Not only that, but he also remembered the route to it.
And so, after a quick trip to the quarters where Peach and Daisy had slept earlier.....
"Where IS it?!" Daisy burst out at last.
Both she and Peach were currently following Kirby, who was barely visible under the pile of clothing he was carrying. The Dreamlander had offered to carry the garments since both princesses' hands were filthy, but he'd underestimated the sheer amount of clothing they actually wore. As it was, he somehow managed to stagger forward underneath the weight of the pile without falling over.
"Daisy, calm down." Peach soothed her cousin. "I'm sure it's around here somewhere."
"You'd THINK they'd make them easy to find in this place!" The brown-haired princess fumed. "I can't stand the horrible smell from this dress any longer! GAH!"
"Kirby, are you sure we're going the right way?" Peach worriedly asked.
"See for yourself." Kirby grunted. "There it is!"
Up ahead lay a wooden door that had a blacked-in silhouette of a koopa wearing a large ribbon and a dress placed on it. "See? I TOLD you I saw a restroom when Mario and I were walking around here!" Kirby grinned.
"Finally!" Daisy sighed in relief, rushing to the door and pushing it open. "C'mon, Peach!"
"Wait!" Kirby called after her. "Don't forget your spare clothes!" He glanced back and forth between Peach and the door. "Peach, could you-no, wait, your hands are still dirty, I forgot. Umm...I know, I'll just go put them in the restroom for you two. Okay?"
The Pink Wonder began running inside the room without waiting for an answer. "No, wait!" Peach cried out. "Don't go in there!!"
Too late, Kirby was already in the room. "Oh, no." Peach sighed. Turning away and shutting her eyes tight, she murmured, "This'll be bad..."
From within the room, the muffled voice of Kirby could be heard. "Hey, Daisy! You forgot about your spare clothes, so......I........" the sound trailed off suddenly.
There was a brief pause.
"EEEEEEEEEK!!!"
The door slammed open and Kirby, minus the massive pile of garments and with the area around his left eye colored a deep purple, flew out of it. He sailed down the hallway several feet before finally being re-introduced to the floor. Peach rushed over to where the Pink Wonder had landed with a grim, knowing look on her face. "Kirby! Are you all right??"
"OooOoOOoooh..." Came the moaned reply. "Where'd that semi truck come from...?"
Peach rolled her eyes. "I warned you!" She reproached. "Daisy was already getting undressed, wasn't she?"
Kirby sat up with a pained grunt. "Yeah...dang, she hits hard..."
Peach smiled slightly. "Hey, you're lucky she only hit you in the eye. She's done a lot worse to others, you know."
"No kidding." Kirby got back to his feet and gingerly felt around the bruised area. "Well, it doesn't seem too bad. Thanks, by the way."
"Welcome. I'm gonna go get clean now. Wait for us, okay?"
"Sure. I'll be right here."
----------------------------------------------
Bowser's eyes snapped open, and he sat up with a gasp. The garbage piles of the trash compactor welcomed him with their strong smells; he nearly gagged.
Finally the spasms abated. Bowser sighed. What had he been dreaming about...? He couldn't remember. It had been a pleasant dream, though. Something to do with a tuxedo and a top hat...
Bowser glanced around himself. Mega Man was firing repeatedly at one of the walls, while Mario and Kapi were trying to clear away some of the obstructing junk around them to give the robot a clear shot. The King of the Koopas staggered to his feet, nursing his incredibly sore head. Now he remembered......that pink marshmallow had rammed him through the ceiling, and then used gravity to slam him into the floor. The impact must've thrown them into the basement......ouch, what a headache he had.
The floor shook every time Bowser took a step, and thus he quickly got the attention of everyone else in the room as he stumbled around dizzily. Kapi screamed so loudly upon seeing him awake that the Koopa King was surprised he didn't go deaf. He was surprised further when Kapi tackled him in the stomach with enough force to tip him over onto his back again.
"King Bowser! You're awake! Oh, thank the Maker!" She sobbed. "I was so worried! What if you'd gone into a coma? Oh, I'm so happy you're awake!"
Bowser flailed around wildly, trying to regain his balance. "Ack! Get off me!" He pleaded with the comparatively miniature Koopa.
Kapi's eyes widened. "Oh, I'm so sorry!" She exclaimed while leaping off Bowser and moving back a few steps, her face red.
"Kapi, I need your help over here!" Mario hollered across the room.
"Right, sorry, I'm coming!" Kapi called back as she sprinted in-between the trash piles to where she'd left Mario.
Bowser struggled to his feet again, hanging onto a nearby trash pile for balance. For some reason, he couldn't focus his eyes properly. It was because of this that he didn't quite see the strange blue portal opening up in front of Mega Man...
----------------------------------
Sonic finally stopped running, but only after he'd taken a wrong turn and crashed into a dead end. He sat up and cradled his spiny head, which now sported a large bruise on its surface. Oy, that'd hurt.
He looked around himself, recognizing nothing of his surroundings. Somehow, he wasn't surprised. He decided to try walking and see where he ended up. That way, he'd be able to see what was in front of him before he collided with it-and if there were more dead ends around here, that would definitely be important.
Testing his legs to make sure nothing was broken, he stood up and began to meander through the identical stone halls. This hallway apparently hadn't been used in a long time; the floor had a thick layer of dust on it that swirled up slightly as he walked.
Sonic approached a bend in the corridor and turned it without a thought. Two seconds later he turned it again, running back the way he'd come with a panicked look on his face. He was promptly followed by a large group of around 20 or so guards.
"Ack! Hey, I'm sorry already! I didn't mean to come here!" Sonic tried to explain while dodging thrown spears and arrows. "I'm lost, that's all! Don't hurt me!"
Either the guards didn't hear him or they were simply ignoring him. Either way, they continued their chase. "Fine, if that's the way you want it!" Sonic yelled at them before using the speed he was so well-known for. He wound up his legs into a red blur shaped like a figure 8, and took off. The guards were forced to slow down as his acceleration threw the floor's layer of dust up into the air in a thick cloud. By the time the cloud had dissipated enough for the guards to see, the hedgehog was gone.
An interesting session of hacking and coughing followed as the guards tried to clear their lungs of the foul dust particles. One guard turned to the leader after getting his breath back and panted, "I told you the Old Coal wasn't safe."
For the first time, the leader was in full agreement. Although nobody could see his face behind the mask he always wore, his face was a pale white color, and his mouth was pulled into a taut line. "Let's get the hell out of here!" He whispered fearfully.
----------------------------------
Amazingly, the Central Control room was still intact after Kamek's little show of anger. A massive conglomeration of mechanical parts that formed the main CPU of the room's supercomputer took up nearly half of the room. It sat behind a table with several monitors and keyboards on top of it, each of which was hooked up to the CPU via wire. The only things that seemed out of place were the absence of one of the computer monitors, and the smoking pieces of metal littered throughout the room.
Eyeing the computer equipment with something close to deep loathing, Kamek walked slowly and deliberately up to one keyboard. His fingers began hammering at the board's surface, never missing a key or misspelling a word. His eyes swept over the monitor above it, their intense gaze constantly searching.
Nothing happened. Frustrated, Kamek slammed his fists down on the table that the unresponsive computer sat upon. He glared daggers at the blank screen, which was currently showing only a blinking cursor in the upper- left hand corner. Something had locked him out of the system, and for some reason he couldn't restore his connection.
Struggling to get a grip on his runaway anger, he attempted another try. "Access main program," he typed.
ACCESS DENIED, the computer flashed back at him.
The dark aura started to return around Kamek. He suddenly felt a wild urge to pick up and throw something. "Access main security grid," he typed instead.
ACCESS DENIED.
The aura was quite visible by now. It was a good thing Kamek's hands were busy typing another command, otherwise havoc may have ensued. "Access main program grid," He typed again, fully expecting that same dang message in return.
His expectations were fulfilled, but not in the way he'd expected: ACCESS DENIED...YOU DIDN'T SAY THE MAGIC WORD!
The aura vanished in bewilderment. Kamek blinked once. Twice. He removed his glasses and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, then replaced the spectacles. The message remained the same.
YOU DIDN'T SAY THE MAGIC WORD.
Kamek's expression became irritated again. "What the heck is THAT supposed to mean?!" He yelled angrily at the monitor. The boxlike machine sat silent and unresponsive, serving no other purpose but to aggravate Kamek further. Anyone who would have dared to enter the room at that moment would have sworn they saw steam rising from underneath the Magikoopa's hat.
Kamek glared at the monitor, mentally cursing it in every language he knew. His eyes focused on the blinking cursor.
A moment later, Kamek closed his eyes and opened them again. Had he just seen what he thought he had?
The cursor was slowly traveling across the screen, leaving a series of words in its wake. Kamek glanced down at the keyboard. He hadn't typed anything.
Suddenly curious, he looked back up at the monitor and mouthed out the one word it spelled:
HELLO.
Kamek looked around the room suspiciously, wondering if somebody was lying in wait for him. He cautiously typed out an answer to the greeting, whispering the words as he typed them.
"What's going on?"
The words erased themselves from the screen and were replaced by a reply.
YOU HAVE ALLOWED ME THE ABILITY TO ENTER YOUR EXPANSIVE DATABASE SYSTEM. FOR THAT, I THANK YOU.
Realization wound up one massive fist and smacked Kamek upside the head. He typed furiously.
"Why did you lock me out of the system?!"
Again the words cleared themselves from the screen, and the cursor brought more letters into existence. I APOLOGIZE, BUT I REQUIRED THE MEMORY YOU WERE USING WITH YOUR CONNECTION TO FULLY INTEGRATE MYSELF INTO THE SYSTEM.
Fear made itself known to Kamek at that moment. Something-no, someone-had taken over the computer system, and through it could control every mechanical device in the entire castle. If it wanted to, it could use the security lasers built into this room's ceiling to kill him right here.
I WILL RESTORE YOUR CONNECTION AS SOON AS I CAN, The cursor typed. UNTIL THEN, I BID YOU ADIEU.
The green cursor began to fade out of sight. "Wait!" Kamek hastily typed.
The green cursor reappeared. Kamek's hands shook as he slowly typed one last question:
"Who are you?"
The reply was slow in coming, and Kamek almost wondered if the mysterious entity had stopped listening. But finally, the screen cleared itself. Five letters slowly appeared and remained on the monitor a couple moments before the entire computer shut down on its own.
Kamek sat frozen to his seat, muttering the name in confusion.
"'Sigma'?"
-------------------------------
"Don't forget, you've gotta melt through the wall before it moves completely inward!" Mario had reiterated his plan to him. "If you don't, well..."
"I get the picture!" He'd replied irritably. "Just let me take care of it while you and Kapi clear a path for us to use!"
'Right. Easy plan, huh?' Mega Man thought as he continued his rapid-fire barrage of plasma. 'Not quite as easy as you'd think...'
He heard Kapi's scream and turned his head in time to see her tackle Bowser. Mega Man smiled slightly, then focused his attention back on the task at hand. Or Buster, as it were. Kapi acted really weird around Bowser, so he just wrote off her reaction as another intricacy of the female mind.
So intent was Mega Man on his target, that he didn't even notice the glowing blue hole opening up near him, nor did he see it deposit an object almost at his feet...
----------------------------------
Sonic kept absolutely still, even going so far as to hold his breath so his stomach would stop moving. On the other side of the door he was leaning on, several guards were glancing around themselves and wondering where he'd gone.
"He must've taken the other way back at that intersection." One guard spoke up at last. "C'mon! If we hurry, we can still catch him!"
Rapidly retreating footsteps echoed through the hallway. Sonic let out a huge sigh of relief and wiped a thin film of sweat off his forehead. He'd lost them.
Standing up straight, he looked around the room he was in for the first time. His eyes widened. "Whoa..." He uttered.
The first thing he noticed was the size of the room. Easily as large as a football stadium, the place seemed to stretch for miles off into the distance. The ceiling was too high up to be believable. In short, it was frackin' huge.
The next thing Sonic noticed was the massive power generator standing before him, literally humming and crackling with the current running through it. Shaped like a cylinder that ballooned out at the ends, it took up one entire wall of the room he now stood in. A rat's nest of wires ran into the machinery connected to its top and bottom, traveling up into the ceiling and into the walls. All in all, it was a stunning sight.
Now Sonic didn't know this, but the generator itself did not actually produce the electricity for the castle. In fact, it merely converted it. A series of lightning rods that were set up on the castle's roof fueled it by sending the raw electrical power they attracted through a series of cables to the massive energy fluctuators set up across the room. These machines regulated how much electricity was sent to the generator for it to convert into usable working energy.
Sonic shuffled over to the machine, never taking his eyes off the immense glowing cylinder in its middle. The generator seemed almost to flow with other colors when he looked at it closely-
His foot found a cable lying on the floor. This cable connected the fluctuators to the generator, and got yanked forward by his foot as he tripped over it, causing it to violently disconnect from the generator in a shower of sparks. With a click, the generator shut off, its power severed. Across the room, the fluctuator sensed it was no longer connected to the generator and shut itself down as a safety measure.
Throughout the castle, a blackout ensued.
------------------------
Breathe. In. Out.
Darkness come. Darkness good. Need darkness.
But light not all gone.
Breathe. In. Out.
Will strike now, and restore darkness.
Time to feed.
------------------------
Everyone suddenly found themselves in the dark. Literally. The torches all extinguished themselves at the same time, since the energy that pumped them flammable gas was no longer there. In the basement, the trash compactor stopped moving with a slowly dying whine.
Not a sound disturbed the silence that followed---for a couple seconds, at least.
"What the heck just happened?" Mario blurted out.
A click emitted from somewhere in the darkness. Suddenly Mario was looking at a beam of light coming from Mega Man's eyes, and aimed at the wall.
Mega Man turned his head towards Mario. "The power went off." The robot observed. "Everyone okay?" He turned to look around the room, and the eyebeams did so as well.
"Yeah, we're fine." Kapi reported. "Why'd the power stop, though?"
This was a question that none of them could answer. Mega Man turned back to the wall and began firing again. "I'm not sure. But we might as well finish what we started, since there isn't any other way out."
"True." Mario admitted. "Okay Kapi, let's get to work!"
"Hey, wait a second!" Bowser frowned. "Why're you guys going to all that trouble? I can bust through the walls, no problem!"
And with that, the Koopa King walked up to the wall Mega Man had been firing at and slashed a gaping hole in it with his sharp claws.
Kapi's jaw dropped, while Mario smacked himself in the forehead. Mega Man simply smiled. "I thought my scans of the wall were wrong because they kept saying it wasn't very thick. But anything that thin would've melted by now!"
"You came here from a portal-world." Bowser chuckled at the robot. "Try not to think too much about it. Come on; let's get out of here."
----------------------------------
Sonic ran blindly through the darkness, smashing into random obstacles in his path. He didn't know where he was going or why, all he knew was that he had to get out of there!
Far behind him, the clanking footsteps of guards echoed off the walls. Numerous beams of light shined out at him from the darkness, trying to find his elusive form. He shied away from them, retreating even further into the darkness.
'Stupid stupid stupid!' He berated himself mentally. Why hadn't he high- tailed it out of there when the power went out? Of COURSE the guards would check that room first---that was where the power came from, after all! Why hadn't he left when he had the chance, instead of sitting there frozen to the floor in surprise?
It seemed that he might lose them. It seemed he might escape.
Then he tripped.
"Waaaaagh!" Sonic yelled as he tumbled head-over-heels into a wall. Wham. Colored stars and lights flashed before his vision. He reeled backwards, stumbling dizzily around the area while he tried to make the multiple images he was seeing go away. Meanwhile, the guards behind him arrived on the scene.
Sonic didn't notice them, since he was hunched down on the floor and cradling his head in both hands. A major headache was starting to form in his brain.
"Freeze!" One guard, the leader of the unit, yelled while pointing his spear at Sonic. "Don't move!"
"I couldn't if I wanted to," Sonic growled. "Get that light outta my face!"
"Hey, check this out!" Someone from off to the side called out. The light receded, and Sonic began the arduous process of blinking the spots out of his eyes.
"What is it, Koi?" The leader asked while walking over to the Koopa that had made the exclamation.
Koi pointed down at a spot on the floor that he was shining his light at. "Look at what that guy tripped over!"
Curious, the leader bent down to take a closer look. The object seemed to be made of metal, judging from the way it reflected light. It was shaped similarly to the intruder they'd just been chasing, with blue spikes poking out of the back of its head.
Suddenly the image conjured up a very vivid memory in the Koopa's mind...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Hey, Karl! Something just came through a portal!"
"Really?" Karl asked while glancing at the long rut in the dirt that led to where his friend Koi was bending over an object on the ground. "Looks like it had a rough landing."
"No kidding. It doesn't seem to be working, either."
Karl walked over and glanced at the mysterious object. It was a very sophisticated, blue chrome robot that was far too complex for him to understand. It didn't move.
"I doubt we'll be able to use it for anything except scrap. Let's take it to the junkpile." Karl announced. "Here, I'll grab these feet-things and you grab those other things at the top." He pointed at a pair of steel hands that lay limp at the robot's sides.
"Alright, then." Koi agreed. They nodded at each other, heaved the heavy machinery up with a grunt, and carted it over to a nearby canyon that contained the aforementioned junkpile.
"On the count of three, we'll toss it in." Karl explained. "Okay?"
"Okay." Koi shrugged.
"One!" They began to swing the robot from side to side.
"Two!" They swung harder.
"Three!"
The machine went sailing into the air in a perfect arc, before hitting the chasm's bottom and impaling itself on top of several sharp, pointy rocks.
Both Karl and Koi waited to see if the robot would move. When it didn't, they gave each other a high-five and walked away.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A sense of nightmare hit Karl as he realized he was looking at the same robot, except it was now repaired and functional.
"Dang flashlight." The guard next to Karl muttered while banging a hand against the side of his torch. "The batteries are dying again." He hit the flashlight again, and the light coming from it went out. "Aw, crud!" He yelled.
The image of the repaired robot vanished as the light extinguished itself, but it still stood out vividly in Karl's mind. Slowly, ever so slowly, he pointed his own flashlight at the robot.
-----------------------------------
Main systems online.
Loading backup systems...please wait.
..........
Backup systems online.
Activating personality software.
...........
.....what happened?
Where am I?
What's going on?
WARNING! Unidentified organisms located on radar!
What the...?
Actvating secondary systems.....
Video feed online.
I blinked; there we go, now I can see again. In the corner of my eye, several glaring red dots stood out on my radar. I turned my head to look at a couple of them who were leaning over me.
------------------------------------
Two black voids on the robot's face lit up with glowing pupils, lighting up the area with an eerie red tint. They flickered for a moment, then focused on Karl.
"Uh...Koi?" The Koopa asked the guard next to him nervously while starting to edge away, his hand holding the flashlight beginning to shake slightly.
------------------------------------
Hmm, they were Koopas. They looked familiar, too.
Wait a second...
Video logs accessed
Playing video file 44.2232.6798.
Analyzing image in frame 107865...
Comparing to current video feed...
98% chance of identical match
....
...well, this is an interesting development. So these were the @%#$s that threw me off that cliff, eh?
...'Oh, sweet irony. Thine humor bring great mirth.'
I'm going to enjoy this.
------------------------------------
"Koi?" Karl repeated urgently, trying to get his friend's attention. Somehow, he knew that the blue robot recognized him...
Koi was busy hitting his flashlight, trying to get it working again. "Yeah Karl?" He replied absently without looking up.
"Uh...did this thing have glowing eyes when you found it?"
Koi looked up, saw the activated robot, and visibly went a shade paler than before. "No..."
Karl's hand shook so heavily that he dropped the flashlight a split-second later, redirecting its illumination elsewhere while casting them into darkness.
The sound of coming death thundered in the pause that followed, and Karl could have sworn he heard a distant voice laughing at him.
The eyes attacked.
-------------------------------------
Sonic's ears pricked up as the sounds of a nearby struggle reached them. A clatter as something plastic fell onto the floor, then a couple muted thumps as something heavier fell a few seconds later. He lifted his head to see what was happening.....
.....A moment later, he wished he hadn't.
Metal Sonic stood mere feet away from him, red eyes burning like the fires of Hell. An activated flashlight that lay nearby cast a dim light onto the robot's body, revealing a dark fluid (Sonic hoped it was just oil) that dripped slowly from his metallic claws. The robot shifted his position to reveal what was behind him, and Sonic was hit with a sudden wave of nausea. Against the far wall lay the disfigured corpses of the guards, throats slashed and gushing blood. They hadn't even had time to scream.
"Hello, Ssssssonic." The machination hissed, beginning to stalk slowly forward. "What a surprise; I didn't expect to find you here."
"H-how...?" Sonic choked, quickly standing up and backpedaling away. "How'd you get here?!" He demanded at last.
"I have been in this Zone far longer than you realize, rodent. But as for how I came to be in this particular building..." The robot paused his advance for a moment, hesitating. "I was.delivered by a friend, if you must know."
"What do you mean? What 'friend'?"
Metal didn't answer, but instead continued closing the distance between them. The robot's red eyes flared, and reflexes that had been honed from years of sabotage missions told Sonic to duck.
One of Mecha's clawed hands swept through the air above Sonic's head, their razor-sharp fingers reaching for his throat. Heart pounding with adrenaline, Sonic dove to the side and snatched up the activated flashlight on the floor before rolling to his feet, ready to fight.
Mecha gazed levelly at his opponent for a few seconds before thrusting forward in a football tackle, using his rocket engine to propel himself through the air without touching the ground. Sonic's back slammed into the wall, and all the air in his lungs evacuated with a whoosh. Breathless, he collapsed to his side and gasped for oxygen like a beached fish.
Even though Mecha's metal face was incapable of complex movements, Sonic could practically feel him sneering in triumph. A metal foot collided with his side as Mecha gave him a couple good kicks. Grunting in pain, Sonic reached out and grabbed the foot with his free hand as it flew towards him for the third time, then pulled hard. Mecha tumbled over onto his back, allowing Sonic time to get back to his feet and put some room between them.
A laser bolt flashed past Sonic's head and collided with the ceiling in a shower of dust and rocks. Sonic mentally cursed, realizing that Mecha was using his built-in lasers to fire at him while the robot got up. Another laser swept past, then another that merited ducking.
It's time to end this, Sonic thought with a growl. He spun around to face Mecha, and went into a sudden spindash. Mecha avoided the attack with a simple sideways boost of his rocket engine, then reached out and grabbed one of Sonic's legs as he passed.
Surprise hit Sonic in the face, along with the floor. He impacted it with a strangled grunt, then looked back to see what had tripped him. "Hey, leggo!" He yelled while kicking futilely with his captured limb. Mecha dodged, then grabbed Sonic's other foot with his free hand. He swung Sonic up by his legs and around in a circle, then released when the blue hedgehog was aimed at the wall.
Sonic's head exploded in a kaleidoscope of colors and sounds. He yelled in pain, clutching at his face with both hands as he tried to regain his bearings. His senses suddenly screamed for him to move, and he dove forward in an evasive rolling maneuver as a red-painted, steel shoe slammed into the spot where his head had been.
Realizing he'd missed, Mecha retracted his foot without noticing the deep imprint it had left in the wall. Sonic's momentum carried him forward in- between Mecha's legs, and he stood back up behind the robot just in time to see a fist flying at his face.
Two seconds and twenty feet later, Sonic skidded to a halt on the floor of the hallway. He sat up dizzily, shaking the random spots out of his vision. Glancing upward , he spotted a twin set of glowing eyes flying at him via rocket engine. He glanced at his right hand, which had been holding the flashlight this whole time. He looked at Mecha again. By now, the robot was almost on top of him. Sonic gritted his teeth in determination.
The flashlight sailed through the air with the greatest of ease, nailing Mecha directly in the forehead. Direct hit.
----------------------------------
ERROR! Severe damage to main video feed! Activating backup systems to compensate...
Auxillary video feed offline. Shutdown of main video commencing. Transferring power to auto-repair...
My vision flickered and dissolved into static. Snarling in the extreme rage I felt at that moment, I glanced at my radar instead. The rodent had gotten up and was circling around me to attack from behind, thinking I was blind. Well, he'll get an unpleasant surprise...
--------------------------
Sonic stood up, noticing that the red pupils of Mecha's eyes had gone out- only the orange flame from the robot's engine gave light to the area now. Mecha grunted as his vision was lost, and lashed out with his left arm in a blind rage while holding his right arm up to shield his face from further attack. Sonic nimbly hopped out of the way of the counterattack and circled around to strike again.
A whoosh of air, and Mecha's rocket engine ignited in Sonic's face. Sonic screamed before he could stop himself and fell backwards, holding his smoking hands up over his head.
Reality went haywire at that moment.
All motion abruptly ceased; Sonic was locked in mid-fall, Mecha in turning his head to see the damage he'd caused. The landscape began to shift and ripple like water, bending and stretching at the seams. The disturbance grew greater, beginning to affect the statuelike forms of Sonic and Mecha, as well.
At the center of it all, a hole opened. A blurry, reddish shape leapt through before it closed a second later, and all returned to normal.
Time restarted, and Sonic fell onto his back. A new form now stood protectively in front of him, shielding him from further attack. Mecha blinked in stunned amazement when he turned around and spotted the newcomer. "It can't be--!"
The stranger pointed one massive, spiked hand at the robot. "Leave. Now." It commanded in a familiar male voice. A stream of green energy flew out from the hand and formed a greenish portal around the robot, cutting off Mecha's yell of outrage as it closed and left nothing behind.
Sonic thought he recognized the newcomer's voice from somewhere, and made an attempt to prove his theory. "Knux...?" He asked weakly, before passing out where he lay.
The stranger glanced down at Sonic, and worry creased its brow. "He's hurt worse than I thought." He murmured to himself as he kneeled down to check Sonic's wounds.
A sudden tremor shook the fortress, causing dirt and loose stones to fall down from the ceiling. The stranger cursed. "I'm too late. We've gotta get out of here....." A shimmering green portal, similar to the one that had taken Mecha, enveloped them both and disappeared, leaving an empty and battle-marred hallway behind.
----------------------------------
RUUUUMMMBBBLLLE.....
"Whoa, what the HECK was that?!" Kamek yelped as the shaking threw him onto the floor. No reply came from the dead computer in front of him, which had shut off when the power died.
Kamek began to get back to his feet when another, stronger shockwave ripped through the building and threw him back down. "OWCH! Dang, that hurts!" He grumbled.
A small aftershock vibrated the floor slightly. "What's going on?!" The MagiKoopa demanded, looking around the room from his position on the floor. "The only thing that'd cause an earthquake around here would be....." Realization came to Kamek and produced the only logical explanation for the shaking. ".....Oh, crap." Kamek reached into his robes and brought out his wand, waving it around with much muttering. A rush of sparkles, and he teleported out of the room.
----------------------------------
RUUUUMMMBBBLLLE.....
"Yikes!" Mario yelled in surprise as the tremor sent him reeling into a garbage pile. "What the heck?! Bowser, what's going on?!?"
But the Koopa King seemed just as surprised at this turn of events as Mario was. "Heck if I know!" He growled, leaning on the wall he'd just torn a hole through. "KAMEK, GET IN HERE!"
Amazingly (although Mario privately thought it was a coincidence), Kamek appeared above their heads on his new broomstick at that moment. "Everyone!" He exclaimed in panic. "We've got to get out of here, NOW! I'm gonna teleport us, so hold on!"
"Hey, what's going on?" Kirby demanded while poking his head down through the hole in the ceiling. "What happened while we were gone? Mario?"
"Kamek, hold it!" Mario spoke up over the Magikoopa's chanting. "The princesses are on the second floor! Take them too, okay?"
"WHAT?! They've been here this whole time?!?" Bowser bellowed a split second before vanishing in a rush of shining sparkles.
"What the--? Hey, what happened to him?" Mega Man exclaimed before he, too, vanished.
One at a time, every person in the room was teleported out of the castle and to the foot of the hill which it stood upon. Last to arrive were the princesses and Bowser, then Kamek himself. The MajiKoopa dropped to one knee, panting from the exertion of using the spell.
"Hey, what was THAT all about, huh?!" Kapi screeched. She marched right up to Kamek and grabbed him around the neck in both hands, shaking him violently. "Just-what-the-heck-are-you-doing?!" She yelled, punctuating each word with a shake. "You-could-have-gotten-us-killed-you-crazy-Koopa-"
A clawed hand on her shoulder stopped her tirade. She glanced up into the monstrous face of Bowser, and her eyes went wide. "Put him down, Kapi. I think I know why he got us out of there, and if I'm right, he saved our lives." The Koopa King rumbled.
Kapi released Kamek at once, backing quickly away with a meek expression and an embarassed blush. Bowser nodded approvingly at her and walked up to Kamek, himself. "Kamek, you DID remember to teleport my children out first, right?" He asked quickly, a worried undertone apparent in his voice.
Kamek hung his head, and Bowser's heart sank down clear to his clawed toes with the reply. "I'm sorry.....Lord Bowser.....but I only had.....enough MP for.....one mass teleport....." Kamek panted.
Bowser suddenly stood up, eyes wide with panic as he turned to look at the castle. "NO! KIDS!" He yelled desperately, starting to run up the hill towards the castle. "NOOOO!"
"King Bowser! Wait!" Kapi squeaked in fear, running after the King.
"It's too.....late....." Kamek sighed. "Look....." He pointed at the castle, and everyone turned to see what was happening.
Mouths became unhinged. Eyes bulged. Peach clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle a scream.
A massive, swirling, purple portal had appeared around the castle, and was slowly shrinking with the building inside of it. In moments, the castle had completely vanished.
"No--!" Bowser cried as he reached the top of the hill, now bare and empty. "No--! Kids! My children! Noo--!" He sank to his knees, weeping uncontrollably. "No.....not them...take me, instead...please...not them..." He sobbed.
The silence at the foot of the hill was deafening. A slight breeze stirred among the rocks littered at their feet as everyone shared mutual looks of shock with each other. Finally, Mario quietly spoke.
"Kamek....I think it's about time you told us what's going on."
"I agree." Mega Man chimed in.
Kamek sighed again. "It's quite a story, if you have the patience to listen to it. Are you sure you want to hear it?"
"Yes." Kirby answered grimly.
"Very well, then....."
NEXT CHAPTER: The answers to all your questions are revealed. Why are the portals popping up? Where did they come from? What is their purpose? What happened to Castle Koopa? Did Link and Luigi make it out of there before it vanished? And where in the blazes is Pikachu?
Find out all this, and more, in.....
(dramatic chord)
....Crossover Saga, Chapter 12: Deadline. Coming soon to a website near you!
(orchestral fanfare)
.....man, that was SO cheesy.....
Author's Notes of DOOM! Mwahahahahaha!!
Protoman: Greetings, readers! This chapter has got a very special Author's Note after it, 'cause today we've got something special planned for you! Don't ask me what it is, though. I have no clue. Hopefully, Stoney will fill us in on the details when he gets here.
(Stoney walks onscreen dragging a colossal, enormous, gargantuan, gigantic, humongous, massive, immense-)
Stoney: Get on with it!!
(--burlap bag behind him.)
Protoman: [raises eyebrow] What's in there? A body?
Stoney: Yes. [tips bag over, and THOUSANDS of letters spill out] It's a body that looks suspiciously like a large pile of letters.
Protoman: [gaping] What the HECK?
Stoney: You've got mail! Or more specifically, I've got mail!
(Knuckles walks onscreen)
Knuckles: [notices the letters] Holy--! Are all those for YOU?!
Stoney: Yep! C'mon, let's read 'em!
(Protoman's arm starts emitting a beeping noise. He looks at it and presses a button, making the sound stop.)
Protoman: No can do, buddyroe. I just got a message from Dr. Light- apparently Mega Man needs me to save his bacon again. [sighs] A brother's job is never done! Oh well, seeya!
(Protoman warps out)
Stoney: What about you, Knuckles?
Knuckles: Sorry, but I've gotta get back to the Master Emerald. Maybe some other time, 'kay?
(Knuckles walks off-screen)
Stoney: Hmph! Fine, I'll just read them myself! [picks up a letter and reads the return address] Hmm. A letter from Yoshiman! All right! [rips open the letter and accidentally rips up the contents in the process]
Stoney: Oops...
(five minutes and lots of scotch tape later...)
Stoney: There we go, good as new!
(Metal Sonic enters)
Stoney: Ah, Mecha! Just in time! Would you like to help me read the mail?
Mecha: [shrugs] Very well. [sits down and opens one letter]
Stoney: Ok, thanks! [starts to read his letter out loud] Yoshiman says:
"How terribly exciting. As always, it's been a real pantload---
Stoney: Uh, what's a 'pantload'? Please tell me it's not what I think it is, because if it is then that remark would be an insult. Hang on, the letter continues:
---And I'm going to warn you beforehand. . . if you include FFVII characters without including FFIV or FFVI characters, I'm going to hurt you. With this wet sponge."
Stoney: [gasps] Oh NO! Not the wet sponge! Anything but THAT! [bursts out laughing]
Metal Sonic: [blinks] ...Error, does not compute. What is a 'FFIV'?
Stoney: Ah, never mind. What about your letter?
Metal Sonic: I have yet to read it.
Stoney: Well, go ahead! I'm not stopping you!
Metal Sonic: Fine. [reads, gasps in horror] Oh NO!
Stoney: What's wrong? What's it say?
Metal Sonic: [tries to stuff letter into a hidden compartment on his arm] Nothing, forget it.
Stoney: [trying to get at the compartment] Hey, c'mon, let me see!
Metal Sonic: No! Stop it!
Stoney: Brackets, Parentheses, I need your help here!
(the letter magically appears in Stoney's paw)
Metal Sonic: What the--?! [checks compartment to find it's empty] Dang it!!
Stoney: Thanks, you guys!
(No problem.) [Ditto.]
Stoney: [reads address] Ah, it's from Angel-Weasel Woman! Groovy! She says:
"*happy squeal* Mecha! ^O^ *huggles bot who has this "For-the-Love-of-God- Help-Me" look* He's here! I hope he gets a good part."
Stoney: [starts to laugh]
Metal Sonic: [muttering] I hate getting hugs...
Stoney: Aw, I think it's nice! You've got fans, isn't that awesome?
Metal: You'd think it would be, wouldn't you?
Stoney: ........what's THAT supposed to mean?
Group of Rabid Mecha Fans: [screaming] OH MY GOD, LOOK! IT'S MECHIE!!
Stoney: [blinks, raises one eyebrow] "Mechie"?
Metal Sonic: Ack! They've found me! [starts to run away from the fans] SOMEBODY HELP MEEEE!
Group of Rabid Mecha Fans: [start to chase Mecha, still screaming] COME HERE SO WE CAN HUG YOU, YOU BIG CUTIE!!!
Mecha: NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
(Rabid Mecha Fans chase Metal Sonic off-screen)
Stoney: ...... [bursts out laughing]
(Mecha flies back onscreen and hits Stoney upside the head)
Stoney: OW!
Metal Sonic: Stop laughing! This isn't funny!
Group of Rabid Mecha Fans: THERE HE IS!!
Metal Sonic: AHHHH!!
(Mecha gets chased off-screen again)
Stoney: ......geez, that hurt. Oh well, who's next? [picks up a sheet of paper that isn't in an envelope] Ooh! It's from Billy-Bob Burmstrang, a.k.a. DragonBoy! All right! He says:
"I guess Kirby likes being called powderpuff about as much as Cole, huh? 0_0"
Stoney: [nods] Yep, that's true. I was hoping you'd notice that! For all the readers who are unfamiliar with who Cole is, he's a human-turned- Dreamlander from Billy's crossover fanfic. In the story, Cole got called the same thing Kirby did, with, um......unfortunate.....results. So remember, people: never, EVER call any member of the Dreamlander species a "Powderpuff"! It'll do ya good!
Kirby: (from offscreen) WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL ME?!
Stoney: [sweatdrops] Uh, nothing! [laughs nervously] Um...next! [tosses letter over his shoulder, picks up a new one]
Stoney: Did I just pick up a new shoulder??
(No, you picked up a new LETTER.)
Stoney: Oh, okay! [opens it and reads] This letter was written by a bloke called Echoes of the Mind. He or she says:
"Not too shabby, but you mocked the metal. I'll let it slide this time, but watch out for the flying puppies."
Stoney: [blinks in confusion] Ummm...the heck? Contrary to what you may think, Echoes, I have nothing against steel, silicon, iron, pewter, nickel, titanium, aluminum, tin, brass, lead, copper, mercury, silver, bronze, gold, platinum, stainless steel, or any other metals you can think of! Although it might SEEM that way when I'm really mad at my slow-as-heck modem, it's not true! Honestly!
(Well said.)
Stoney: Thank you. [gets smacked in the side of the head by a flying puppy] OW! What the--?? Did you do that, Parentheses?
(Who, US? No!)
(Stoney looks around, sees the puppy, immediately hisses)
Stoney: AAHH! DOG! SOMEBODY CALL THE POUND!
(What's your problem?)
Stoney: As anybody who's read my bio knows, I'm a cat!
(the puppy looks up at Stoney with big, cute eyes)
Stoney: [pauses, then sighs] Aww, it's just a little kid. Even I can't stay mad at something so cute! [kneels down so he's eye-level with the puppy] Here, doggy-doggy-doggie!
(Puppy's eyes turn blood-red, then it leaps forward and bites Stoney on the nose)
Stoney: .............
(Uh-oh...)
Stoney: ......EEEEYYYYOOOOWWWW!! [Hops around frantically with the dog hanging on to his nose] OWOWOWOWOW! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF! AHHHH! SOMEBODY HELP ME!!
(The evil, demonic puppy vanishes in a puff of non-existence)
Stoney: [sighs, rubs his sore nose] Whew, thanks Parentheses.
(Welcome.)
Stoney: I wonder where the heck that puppy came from...oh, well, new letter! [picks up an envelope] Ooh, another letter from AnT! He says:
"Again with the cliffhanger! Damn it! I should've known Sonic would act like that in front of MegaMan. Hope you update REAL SOON!!"
Stoney: MWA HA HA! I am the suspense MASTER! You shall all bow down before the awesome power of my cliffhangers! [blinks, suddenly normal again] Anyhoo, what did you originally think Sonic would act like? A toaster?
(Sonic drops onscreen from above)
Stoney: [staring at Sonic in amazement] How'd you do that?
Sonic: Chaos Control.
Stoney: Oh.
Sonic: Anyway, if you make me act like that, I swear I'll sic Omochao on you!
Stoney: Act like what?
Sonic: Like... [sighs] Just forget it.
Stoney: Okey-dokey! [picks up...ah, you know it by now] Well, whaddaya know? A new reader! His name is Travis Lewis X, Emerald Dragon!
Sonic: Ooooh, a dragon! I wonder if he's related to Dulcy?
Stoney: Who?
Sonic: A friend of mine. C'mon, let's read the letter already!
Stoney: Alright. It says:
"This is a GREAT fiction. All the characters are well represented, and the plot is tight.
Heh, I THOUGHT Kirby was a little more than meets the eye...
Haven't seen Tango in a LONG time. KITTY! ^o^
Mario seems to be quite IC. And Luigi eating a salad was funnah! ^_~
FINISH! OR I SEND THE LEATHERBACK DOGS AFTER YOU!"
Stoney: [cringes] Ack! Not dogs! Those are worse than puppies!
Sonic: [Scratches head in confusion] What's a 'fiction'?
Stoney: [reads letter again] Hmm...'the plot is tight'...wait a second. Plot?? [Slaps forehead] D'oh! I knew I forgot something! Oh, well. Maybe I could include a plot in the later chapters...
Sonic: What're you talking about? What chapters?
Stoney: ...of course, a good plot always requires good foreshadowing, so if I just start one here it'll seem too abrupt. Maybe I should just redo the whole story...
Sonic: Are you even listening to me??
Stoney: ...but that'll take to long to do. It took me long enough just to get this chapter done, Lord knows how long it'll take me to do the other 10...
Sonic: That does it! I've had enough! [walks off-screen in disgust]
Stoney: ...actually, now that I think about it, there is a plot. But it's a long one; we're still somewhere in the conflict part of it. [reads letter yet again] Ah yes, Tango. The much-underrated cat from the Game Boy game Mega Man V. I really don't like how he's been shoved out of the spotlight while Rush gets all the attention, so I decided to include him in this fic. Just you wait---Tango's gonna get a MAJOR part in the story later on! Yahoo!
Stoney: [Picks up another letter) Another new reader, whoo hoo! M. E. Gibbs writes:
"MY GOD THE CHARACTERS HAVE PERSONALITY!
What a novel concept....
Sorry, ignore my cynasism (and spelling for that matter...)
An EXCELLENT piece so far. You can really feel the characters, they aren't just there for cameos. Each character has their own problems, difficulties, and conflicts, not just the main character, which is one of the things that makes this story so fantastic. This keyboard I'm typing on really sucks...but that has nothing to do with your story so, yeah, I'll just shut up. Can't wait to see what happens next and how everything ties together! Keep up the fantastic writing!"
Stoney: To respond to this letter, I'll need to be serious for a bit.
(Is that even possible?)
Stoney: Yes, so be quiet! Ahem. A wise man once said: "Bad characters suck." Or maybe that was my English teacher, I'm not sure. After playing video games for years, I've grown increasingly appalled at the lack of general information for some of the most popular characters in gaming history. Nintendo never told us where Mario or Luigi came from; Capcom managed to form a reasonably good origin story for Mega Man, but struck out big-time when it came to describing everything else about him; as for Sega, they did a lousy job in explaining the physics of their characters. And these are just a few of the inconsistencies!
Something had to be done.
So I decided to try filling the gaps in the information myself. And I decided to do so through a story. I didn't want to write a series, but instead one epic novel. How was I to incorporate so many characters from so many different universes together in one story without making the book longer than the Guinness Book of World Records?
Of course! A crossover fic!
The rest is history. What you've read so far has been a monumental effort on my part to create viable personalities for these characters. I've tried to create explanations for some of their vaguer aspects, and conjured up possible reactions the characters would go through in certain circumstances. I'm glad you appreciate the end product. Thanks for the wonderful compliments, they really encourage me to keep on writing.
By the way, M.E., what do you think of the name of Knuckles' theme from Sonic Adventure? Did that song really come from you?
Stoney: [picks up another letter] Yay, another new reader! I'm so happy! This one is named Aura Starfire! She says:
"Wow! So far I am amazed, this a FANTASTIC fanfiction, the interaction between the characters is spot on (except for those I don't know, since I haven't played their games) and it's got me hanging on every word. :) Keep on going!"
Stoney: [awed voice] Amazing! I don't believe it! I........I've got......FANS!
(a red man with goat legs, a pointy tail, and horns on his head appears out of nowhere)
Man: Excuse me, but would you be the person responsible for my domain freezing over just now?
Stoney: What? Who are you?
Man: The Devil. [brandishes a pitchfork in Stoney's direction] Now, I repeat: Did YOU cause the sudden drop in temperature down below?
Stoney: No! It's not MY fault!
Devil: Tell that to them. [points at a group of pigs flying overhead]
Stoney: Parentheses, please get these guys out of here!
(Well, since you asked so nicely...)
(the devil and pigs all vanish in a puff of non-existence)
Stoney: Thanks.
(That's the third time we've helped you. You owe us.)
Stoney: I know, I know.
(Stoney stands up, does the funky chicken, recites the Gettysburg Address backwards and sits down)
Stoney: I did NOT just do that!
(Yes, you did.)
Stoney: No, I didn't! I couldn't recite the whole Gettysburg Address FORWARDS if I wanted to, let alone backwards!
(An anvil falls on Stoney's head as punishment for his insolence)
Stoney: WHAT?! [looks up] Oh, crud...
(WHAM!!)
Stoney: [tosses anvil off him] You jerks! You did that on purpose!
(Stoney spontaneously combusts, thus shutting him up)
Stoney: No, YOU shut up! Why I oughtta-- [combusts] AAAAHHH!
(Bass walks onscreen)
Bass: Hey Stoney, how's it--HOLY CRAP! FIRE!
(Bass runs back off-screen)
Bass: [from off-screen] AAAHHH! HELP! FIRE! WAKE THE PRESIDENT! MAN THE LIFEBOATS! CALL THE GAMEMASTER! THERE'S A FIRE GOING ON! AHHH!
(fire goes out)
Stoney: [now crispy-fried and smoking] Ow... [coughs] You meanies...
(Suddenly, a--)
Stoney: OKAY, OKAY! I take it back! You're the best set of parentheses I've ever used, okay?!
(Much better.)
Stoney: Sheesh. Talk about sensitive. I think I'll use the brackets from now on, they're more agreeable...oh crap, did I just say that out loud?!
(a wet sponge the size of a tow truck falls on Stoney, burying him in the ground)
Stoney: [muffled] OW!!
(I think he's finished talking, for now at least. Thanks for writing in, guys, and thanks for reading so far! You're one of the main reasons Stoney keeps writing this silly fanfic! Keep on writing, and we'll answer more of your reviews next time! Until then, see ya!)
Stoney: [muffled] Are you going to help me out from underneath this thing?
(No.)
CAUTION! The Crossover Saga has a low occurrence of side effects, including uncontrollable laughing and crying as well as the sudden, intense urge to eat fuzzy pickles. Don't ask your doctor before switching from other fanfiction to The Crossover Saga. While adjusting to the change, you might not be able to cope as well with renegade staplers taking over your living room. If you are nursing, pregnant or may become pregnant, go ahead and read the story anyway. I'm not stopping you.
~End!~
(No actual ants were harmed in the making of this Fine Print.)
Random Irritated Reader: Let's get on with the friggin' story already!
Crossover Saga A Fanfiction by Stoney (stoney107@yahoo.com)
Chapter 11---Bankruptcy
Stoney: WHAT?! I'm bankrupt?!? NOOOOO!!!
(Just kidding, everyone! Here's the REAL title.)
Chapter 11---Disaster
"You don't know what you've got 'till it's gone....."
--Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi
Bowser's Castle, 2:03 PM.
Breathe. In. Out.
Loud sound. Floor shake. Wall shake. Ceiling shake.
Sound stop. Shake stop.
Breathe. In. Out.
......what happen?
Come out of shadows, look around.
AAH! Light! Too much! Too bright!
Retreat into shadows. Darkness...better. Feel better.
Breathe. In. Out.
Need more darkness. What do...?
.......wait for more darkness, then strike.
Breathe. In. Out.
-----------------------------------
Kraig let out a monster yawn as he stretched the kinks out of his muscles. 'What a boring day', he mused to himself. Leaning against the shut door behind him, he lazily crossed his arms over his chest and gazed at the world through half-closed eyes.
A few minutes passed, and he gave another quick glance around the area. Nothing new there; The hallway outside the Central Control Room was as empty as ever. It made a 90-degree turn, and the door to the room behind him sat on the outermost wall of it, right next to the corner. One of the gas-powered torches on the eastern wall kept going out--he'd have to get someone to look at that. Occasionally another Koopa guard would pass by, talking lightly of how uneventful their shifts had been. Other than that, there was nothing of interest going on.
Kraig was toying with the idea of taking a lunch break when he heard an odd sort of banging noise come from the other side of the door he was leaning on. He opened his eyes and stood up, wondering if Mario was invading the fortress again. He disregarded the idea at once-how could the plumber have gotten past him into the room he was guarding when he'd been standing in front of its only opening? He quickly unhooked a spear from his shell, brandishing it in front of him like a sword. 'Might as well be prepared in case something happened,' he decided.
The banging sound was growing louder. By now, Kraig could definitely tell it was coming from inside the Central Control room. The only person in there at this time was Kamek, he knew. Perhaps the Magikoopa was having some computer trouble?
Kraig glanced at his watch. Almost time for the next shift to start. Maybe he should let the next assigned guard take care of this problem...he began to walk down the corridor and away from the room. The action saved his life.
"I HATE COMPUTERS!" Someone screamed, their muffled voice echoing randomly off the walls. Startled, Kraig glanced back at the door he'd been standing in front of as the voice screamed again:
"BOLT 4!"
A large explosion from within the Central Control Room disintegrated the door. Kraig's eyes widened. 'Holy crap, what's going on?!' He frantically thought as he started running back to the post he'd just left.
"I HATE THEM!!"
A red glow emitted from the Control Room's dark depths. Kraig screeched to a halt with a gasp as he recognized what was about to happen, then spun around 180 degrees and began running down the hallway in the opposite direction.
"FIRE 2!"
Numerous spheres of flame erupted from the doorway and flew down the hall towards Kraig. The Koopa guard had all of two seconds to dive out of the way and hide in his shell before the weapons of mass destruction soared past him with inches to spare. A couple seconds later, the fires sizzled out as they hit the end of the hallway.
"DAMN THEM ALL TO HELL!" The angry voice screamed. Kraig heard a soft humming sound, getting louder and more high-pitched as something charged up. He cringed in preparation for what would come next.
"METEOR!!!"
Though Kraig did not see it, a brilliant flash of light illuminated the opening into the Central Control Room for a split second, followed shortly by a brief but loud booming sound. A concussion of hot air blasted out of the room, blowing out the light-giving candles of the corridor outside.
The area plunged into darkness. Kraig didn't dare look out to see what was going on, but he could feel himself being tossed about by the incredible force of the winds rushing around him. He shut his eyes tight and wished for it to be over. He couldn't see where he was going, didn't know what was happening. It was a nightmare--a nightmare that he couldn't wake up from.
Two jolts rattled through him as he bounced to a stop. The noise of rushing winds subsided. All went still.
Kraig slowly peeked his head out of his shell. Blackness greeted him, darker than the darkest night. He stood up and glanced around. There was nothing but black around him-he couldn't see a thing. The air was thick and smelled strongly of smoke. He gave a small cough and strained to see anything--anything at all. Nothing appeared to him. It was like being blind.
He reached down to an emergency utility belt strapped around his waist. There was a small flashlight attached to it, in case the gas supply for the torches ever went out. He fumbled with the latch for a few seconds before he finally managed to get it unhooked and turned it on.
The yellowish beam revealed what had once been the Control Room's doorway, now nothing more than bits and pieces of charred debris and broken stone. A massive hole in the wall bled smoke out into the hallway. Kraig frowned. What had just happened?
Someone called out his name. Kraig turned and shined the flashlight behind him, showing a group of Koopa guards running toward him. He recognized them all--they patrolled the areas near this one and were friends of his. A couple of them waved to him, and he waved back.
Kraig turned his flashlight back to the scene in front of him as his companions arrived, panting from their run. Kraig took another careful sniff of the air. Apart from the stench of smoke, the distinct scent of gas was also apparent.
His friends must've noticed it too, because one of them spoke up. "I dare ya to light a match in here," one joked. "What happened? I heard this loud sound, like somebody'd tossed a cement truck off the top floor."
"I'm not sure." Kraig replied slowly. "Mr. Kamek?" He called out, trying to peer through the smoke at the Control Room. "Mr. Kamek, are you all right?"
A guard trained her flashlight on the hole, which was still pouring out smoke. "Whoa! Kamek was in there?!" She exclaimed.
"Looks like a bomb went off, or something..." Another Koopa muttered.
Kraig took another step forward, calling out into the darkness again. "Mr. Kamek? Hello? Dang smoke, I can't see a thing in there." Indeed, the smoke swallowed up their flashlights' beams like a dense fog, preventing any clear visibility of what lay inside.
A cold wind began to pick up in the hallway, sweeping the smoke towards the group until it surrounded them. "Hey, what's this?" One guard exclaimed.
The wind grew stronger; swirling the thick fumes around them, choking them, smothering them. Kraig wrapped an arm around himself to ward off the biting cold that was carried in the breeze, and shivered. He couldn't hardly see his own hand in front of his face, even when he shined his fashlight on it. His guard companions were lost within the dense fog. Luckily, he could still hear their voices. Then a thought occurred to him.
How come there was a wind blowing INSIDE the fortress?
At that moment the smoke seemed to part like the Red Sea before Kraig's eyes. He stepped forward again a tiny bit, raising his flashlight in a feeble attempt to reveal what lay in the dark. "M.....M-Mr. Kamek?"
From deep within the darkness, two eyes ignited.
Someone stepped out from the Central Control Room, and Kraig stumbled back in fear as he saw it. The beam from his flashlight was abruptly cut off at two feet in front of the creature; it's form radiated an aura of dark energy that no light could penetrate. Two glowing pupils that might have been framed by glasses glowed a bright red with rage.
"WHAT." Kamek growled, wand held at the ready.
Kraig struggled to form words--his throat seemed to have stopped working. "Um...is t-there some sort-t of prob-b-blem, s-s-sir??"
For some reason, this question seemed to push Kamek's temper beyond its' limit. With a roar not unlike Bowser's, Kamek pointed his wand at Kraig and snarled out a spell. A flash of magical light, and the hapless guard burst into flames.
That was all the incentive the other guards needed to drop their weapons and run. Screaming in pain, Kraig dropped his flashlight and fled down the hallway after his fellow Koopas. The flames cast odd shadows onto the stone walls as he retreated from sight, eventually vanishing around another bend in the stone hallway.
Kamek stood in the same position for several minutes afterward, taking deep breaths and trying to calm down. Finally the aura of darkness around him abated, and his eyes returned to normal. With an almost casual flick of his wrist, he dissipated the gas and smoke while relighting the torches in the hallway.
He sighed and put his wand away, pausing only to pick up the forgotten flashlight on the floor in front of him. 'Well, that's item # 451 on the list of major screw-ups today,' he thought wryly. 'Dang, I used up way too much MP. I've still got enough for maybe one or two more spells, but that's it.'
Kamek took off his glasses and wearily rubbed his eyes. Things just weren't going well for him lately. How many times had he told Bowser in the past that he hated machines? He'd lost count of the number. Yet for some unfathomable reason, the Koopa king had decided to put him in charge of the castle's security systems not two days earlier.
Kamek hated computers above all other machines--he'd much rather use magic to achieve his ends instead of relying on untrustworthy piles of metal to do the job for him. Yet for some reason, he was an exceptional programmer..and it was because of this that Bowser had stuck him with the job of overseeing the maintenance and security systems in the castle.
The systems were all run from one source, which was the large supercomputer in the room behind him. It was incredibly powerful, but not even the best CPU in the world would be able to help him with the new problem he'd been presented with.
Heaving a deep sigh that would break anyone's heart, Kamek slowly turned to trudge back into the torture room of disobedient circuitry.
-------------------------------
"Okay people, listen up!" The Shy Guy leader of Squadron Alpha barked, shifting the white mask on his face as he spoke. "We've gotten a report of some trouble in the West sector. Normally we'd get there through the main route, but something made a big hole in the ceiling over there and caused a collapse, so that way's blocked off."
Alarm swept through the ranks of Shy Guys standing in front of the leader as whispers broke out among them. The leader held his arms up to quiet them down before continuing.
"Now the only other route I can think of that'll get us there in time to give any sort of help, is the Old Coal."
Murmurs of disagreement responded almost immediately to this. "The Old Coal?!" One Shy Guy burst out. "Nobody uses that route anymore! We're not even sure if it's still safe!"
"Then we'll find out for sure, won't we?" the Leader glared. "Look, I don't want to do this any more than you do. But I have my orders. We're to get to the West sector using the quickest means possible, and that means going through Old Coal. So let's stop grumbling and get on with it! March!"
The Murmurs continued, but the ranks of soldiers obeyed.
----------------------------------
After several minutes of struggling to breathe through the fumes coming from the princesses' sewage-soaked dresses, Kirby finally suggested that the two get cleaned up. The princesses were all for the idea, but neither of them knew where the restrooms were.
Luckily, Kirby remembered seeing such a restroom when Kapi was guiding him and Mario through the castle. Not only that, but he also remembered the route to it.
And so, after a quick trip to the quarters where Peach and Daisy had slept earlier.....
"Where IS it?!" Daisy burst out at last.
Both she and Peach were currently following Kirby, who was barely visible under the pile of clothing he was carrying. The Dreamlander had offered to carry the garments since both princesses' hands were filthy, but he'd underestimated the sheer amount of clothing they actually wore. As it was, he somehow managed to stagger forward underneath the weight of the pile without falling over.
"Daisy, calm down." Peach soothed her cousin. "I'm sure it's around here somewhere."
"You'd THINK they'd make them easy to find in this place!" The brown-haired princess fumed. "I can't stand the horrible smell from this dress any longer! GAH!"
"Kirby, are you sure we're going the right way?" Peach worriedly asked.
"See for yourself." Kirby grunted. "There it is!"
Up ahead lay a wooden door that had a blacked-in silhouette of a koopa wearing a large ribbon and a dress placed on it. "See? I TOLD you I saw a restroom when Mario and I were walking around here!" Kirby grinned.
"Finally!" Daisy sighed in relief, rushing to the door and pushing it open. "C'mon, Peach!"
"Wait!" Kirby called after her. "Don't forget your spare clothes!" He glanced back and forth between Peach and the door. "Peach, could you-no, wait, your hands are still dirty, I forgot. Umm...I know, I'll just go put them in the restroom for you two. Okay?"
The Pink Wonder began running inside the room without waiting for an answer. "No, wait!" Peach cried out. "Don't go in there!!"
Too late, Kirby was already in the room. "Oh, no." Peach sighed. Turning away and shutting her eyes tight, she murmured, "This'll be bad..."
From within the room, the muffled voice of Kirby could be heard. "Hey, Daisy! You forgot about your spare clothes, so......I........" the sound trailed off suddenly.
There was a brief pause.
"EEEEEEEEEK!!!"
The door slammed open and Kirby, minus the massive pile of garments and with the area around his left eye colored a deep purple, flew out of it. He sailed down the hallway several feet before finally being re-introduced to the floor. Peach rushed over to where the Pink Wonder had landed with a grim, knowing look on her face. "Kirby! Are you all right??"
"OooOoOOoooh..." Came the moaned reply. "Where'd that semi truck come from...?"
Peach rolled her eyes. "I warned you!" She reproached. "Daisy was already getting undressed, wasn't she?"
Kirby sat up with a pained grunt. "Yeah...dang, she hits hard..."
Peach smiled slightly. "Hey, you're lucky she only hit you in the eye. She's done a lot worse to others, you know."
"No kidding." Kirby got back to his feet and gingerly felt around the bruised area. "Well, it doesn't seem too bad. Thanks, by the way."
"Welcome. I'm gonna go get clean now. Wait for us, okay?"
"Sure. I'll be right here."
----------------------------------------------
Bowser's eyes snapped open, and he sat up with a gasp. The garbage piles of the trash compactor welcomed him with their strong smells; he nearly gagged.
Finally the spasms abated. Bowser sighed. What had he been dreaming about...? He couldn't remember. It had been a pleasant dream, though. Something to do with a tuxedo and a top hat...
Bowser glanced around himself. Mega Man was firing repeatedly at one of the walls, while Mario and Kapi were trying to clear away some of the obstructing junk around them to give the robot a clear shot. The King of the Koopas staggered to his feet, nursing his incredibly sore head. Now he remembered......that pink marshmallow had rammed him through the ceiling, and then used gravity to slam him into the floor. The impact must've thrown them into the basement......ouch, what a headache he had.
The floor shook every time Bowser took a step, and thus he quickly got the attention of everyone else in the room as he stumbled around dizzily. Kapi screamed so loudly upon seeing him awake that the Koopa King was surprised he didn't go deaf. He was surprised further when Kapi tackled him in the stomach with enough force to tip him over onto his back again.
"King Bowser! You're awake! Oh, thank the Maker!" She sobbed. "I was so worried! What if you'd gone into a coma? Oh, I'm so happy you're awake!"
Bowser flailed around wildly, trying to regain his balance. "Ack! Get off me!" He pleaded with the comparatively miniature Koopa.
Kapi's eyes widened. "Oh, I'm so sorry!" She exclaimed while leaping off Bowser and moving back a few steps, her face red.
"Kapi, I need your help over here!" Mario hollered across the room.
"Right, sorry, I'm coming!" Kapi called back as she sprinted in-between the trash piles to where she'd left Mario.
Bowser struggled to his feet again, hanging onto a nearby trash pile for balance. For some reason, he couldn't focus his eyes properly. It was because of this that he didn't quite see the strange blue portal opening up in front of Mega Man...
----------------------------------
Sonic finally stopped running, but only after he'd taken a wrong turn and crashed into a dead end. He sat up and cradled his spiny head, which now sported a large bruise on its surface. Oy, that'd hurt.
He looked around himself, recognizing nothing of his surroundings. Somehow, he wasn't surprised. He decided to try walking and see where he ended up. That way, he'd be able to see what was in front of him before he collided with it-and if there were more dead ends around here, that would definitely be important.
Testing his legs to make sure nothing was broken, he stood up and began to meander through the identical stone halls. This hallway apparently hadn't been used in a long time; the floor had a thick layer of dust on it that swirled up slightly as he walked.
Sonic approached a bend in the corridor and turned it without a thought. Two seconds later he turned it again, running back the way he'd come with a panicked look on his face. He was promptly followed by a large group of around 20 or so guards.
"Ack! Hey, I'm sorry already! I didn't mean to come here!" Sonic tried to explain while dodging thrown spears and arrows. "I'm lost, that's all! Don't hurt me!"
Either the guards didn't hear him or they were simply ignoring him. Either way, they continued their chase. "Fine, if that's the way you want it!" Sonic yelled at them before using the speed he was so well-known for. He wound up his legs into a red blur shaped like a figure 8, and took off. The guards were forced to slow down as his acceleration threw the floor's layer of dust up into the air in a thick cloud. By the time the cloud had dissipated enough for the guards to see, the hedgehog was gone.
An interesting session of hacking and coughing followed as the guards tried to clear their lungs of the foul dust particles. One guard turned to the leader after getting his breath back and panted, "I told you the Old Coal wasn't safe."
For the first time, the leader was in full agreement. Although nobody could see his face behind the mask he always wore, his face was a pale white color, and his mouth was pulled into a taut line. "Let's get the hell out of here!" He whispered fearfully.
----------------------------------
Amazingly, the Central Control room was still intact after Kamek's little show of anger. A massive conglomeration of mechanical parts that formed the main CPU of the room's supercomputer took up nearly half of the room. It sat behind a table with several monitors and keyboards on top of it, each of which was hooked up to the CPU via wire. The only things that seemed out of place were the absence of one of the computer monitors, and the smoking pieces of metal littered throughout the room.
Eyeing the computer equipment with something close to deep loathing, Kamek walked slowly and deliberately up to one keyboard. His fingers began hammering at the board's surface, never missing a key or misspelling a word. His eyes swept over the monitor above it, their intense gaze constantly searching.
Nothing happened. Frustrated, Kamek slammed his fists down on the table that the unresponsive computer sat upon. He glared daggers at the blank screen, which was currently showing only a blinking cursor in the upper- left hand corner. Something had locked him out of the system, and for some reason he couldn't restore his connection.
Struggling to get a grip on his runaway anger, he attempted another try. "Access main program," he typed.
ACCESS DENIED, the computer flashed back at him.
The dark aura started to return around Kamek. He suddenly felt a wild urge to pick up and throw something. "Access main security grid," he typed instead.
ACCESS DENIED.
The aura was quite visible by now. It was a good thing Kamek's hands were busy typing another command, otherwise havoc may have ensued. "Access main program grid," He typed again, fully expecting that same dang message in return.
His expectations were fulfilled, but not in the way he'd expected: ACCESS DENIED...YOU DIDN'T SAY THE MAGIC WORD!
The aura vanished in bewilderment. Kamek blinked once. Twice. He removed his glasses and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, then replaced the spectacles. The message remained the same.
YOU DIDN'T SAY THE MAGIC WORD.
Kamek's expression became irritated again. "What the heck is THAT supposed to mean?!" He yelled angrily at the monitor. The boxlike machine sat silent and unresponsive, serving no other purpose but to aggravate Kamek further. Anyone who would have dared to enter the room at that moment would have sworn they saw steam rising from underneath the Magikoopa's hat.
Kamek glared at the monitor, mentally cursing it in every language he knew. His eyes focused on the blinking cursor.
A moment later, Kamek closed his eyes and opened them again. Had he just seen what he thought he had?
The cursor was slowly traveling across the screen, leaving a series of words in its wake. Kamek glanced down at the keyboard. He hadn't typed anything.
Suddenly curious, he looked back up at the monitor and mouthed out the one word it spelled:
HELLO.
Kamek looked around the room suspiciously, wondering if somebody was lying in wait for him. He cautiously typed out an answer to the greeting, whispering the words as he typed them.
"What's going on?"
The words erased themselves from the screen and were replaced by a reply.
YOU HAVE ALLOWED ME THE ABILITY TO ENTER YOUR EXPANSIVE DATABASE SYSTEM. FOR THAT, I THANK YOU.
Realization wound up one massive fist and smacked Kamek upside the head. He typed furiously.
"Why did you lock me out of the system?!"
Again the words cleared themselves from the screen, and the cursor brought more letters into existence. I APOLOGIZE, BUT I REQUIRED THE MEMORY YOU WERE USING WITH YOUR CONNECTION TO FULLY INTEGRATE MYSELF INTO THE SYSTEM.
Fear made itself known to Kamek at that moment. Something-no, someone-had taken over the computer system, and through it could control every mechanical device in the entire castle. If it wanted to, it could use the security lasers built into this room's ceiling to kill him right here.
I WILL RESTORE YOUR CONNECTION AS SOON AS I CAN, The cursor typed. UNTIL THEN, I BID YOU ADIEU.
The green cursor began to fade out of sight. "Wait!" Kamek hastily typed.
The green cursor reappeared. Kamek's hands shook as he slowly typed one last question:
"Who are you?"
The reply was slow in coming, and Kamek almost wondered if the mysterious entity had stopped listening. But finally, the screen cleared itself. Five letters slowly appeared and remained on the monitor a couple moments before the entire computer shut down on its own.
Kamek sat frozen to his seat, muttering the name in confusion.
"'Sigma'?"
-------------------------------
"Don't forget, you've gotta melt through the wall before it moves completely inward!" Mario had reiterated his plan to him. "If you don't, well..."
"I get the picture!" He'd replied irritably. "Just let me take care of it while you and Kapi clear a path for us to use!"
'Right. Easy plan, huh?' Mega Man thought as he continued his rapid-fire barrage of plasma. 'Not quite as easy as you'd think...'
He heard Kapi's scream and turned his head in time to see her tackle Bowser. Mega Man smiled slightly, then focused his attention back on the task at hand. Or Buster, as it were. Kapi acted really weird around Bowser, so he just wrote off her reaction as another intricacy of the female mind.
So intent was Mega Man on his target, that he didn't even notice the glowing blue hole opening up near him, nor did he see it deposit an object almost at his feet...
----------------------------------
Sonic kept absolutely still, even going so far as to hold his breath so his stomach would stop moving. On the other side of the door he was leaning on, several guards were glancing around themselves and wondering where he'd gone.
"He must've taken the other way back at that intersection." One guard spoke up at last. "C'mon! If we hurry, we can still catch him!"
Rapidly retreating footsteps echoed through the hallway. Sonic let out a huge sigh of relief and wiped a thin film of sweat off his forehead. He'd lost them.
Standing up straight, he looked around the room he was in for the first time. His eyes widened. "Whoa..." He uttered.
The first thing he noticed was the size of the room. Easily as large as a football stadium, the place seemed to stretch for miles off into the distance. The ceiling was too high up to be believable. In short, it was frackin' huge.
The next thing Sonic noticed was the massive power generator standing before him, literally humming and crackling with the current running through it. Shaped like a cylinder that ballooned out at the ends, it took up one entire wall of the room he now stood in. A rat's nest of wires ran into the machinery connected to its top and bottom, traveling up into the ceiling and into the walls. All in all, it was a stunning sight.
Now Sonic didn't know this, but the generator itself did not actually produce the electricity for the castle. In fact, it merely converted it. A series of lightning rods that were set up on the castle's roof fueled it by sending the raw electrical power they attracted through a series of cables to the massive energy fluctuators set up across the room. These machines regulated how much electricity was sent to the generator for it to convert into usable working energy.
Sonic shuffled over to the machine, never taking his eyes off the immense glowing cylinder in its middle. The generator seemed almost to flow with other colors when he looked at it closely-
His foot found a cable lying on the floor. This cable connected the fluctuators to the generator, and got yanked forward by his foot as he tripped over it, causing it to violently disconnect from the generator in a shower of sparks. With a click, the generator shut off, its power severed. Across the room, the fluctuator sensed it was no longer connected to the generator and shut itself down as a safety measure.
Throughout the castle, a blackout ensued.
------------------------
Breathe. In. Out.
Darkness come. Darkness good. Need darkness.
But light not all gone.
Breathe. In. Out.
Will strike now, and restore darkness.
Time to feed.
------------------------
Everyone suddenly found themselves in the dark. Literally. The torches all extinguished themselves at the same time, since the energy that pumped them flammable gas was no longer there. In the basement, the trash compactor stopped moving with a slowly dying whine.
Not a sound disturbed the silence that followed---for a couple seconds, at least.
"What the heck just happened?" Mario blurted out.
A click emitted from somewhere in the darkness. Suddenly Mario was looking at a beam of light coming from Mega Man's eyes, and aimed at the wall.
Mega Man turned his head towards Mario. "The power went off." The robot observed. "Everyone okay?" He turned to look around the room, and the eyebeams did so as well.
"Yeah, we're fine." Kapi reported. "Why'd the power stop, though?"
This was a question that none of them could answer. Mega Man turned back to the wall and began firing again. "I'm not sure. But we might as well finish what we started, since there isn't any other way out."
"True." Mario admitted. "Okay Kapi, let's get to work!"
"Hey, wait a second!" Bowser frowned. "Why're you guys going to all that trouble? I can bust through the walls, no problem!"
And with that, the Koopa King walked up to the wall Mega Man had been firing at and slashed a gaping hole in it with his sharp claws.
Kapi's jaw dropped, while Mario smacked himself in the forehead. Mega Man simply smiled. "I thought my scans of the wall were wrong because they kept saying it wasn't very thick. But anything that thin would've melted by now!"
"You came here from a portal-world." Bowser chuckled at the robot. "Try not to think too much about it. Come on; let's get out of here."
----------------------------------
Sonic ran blindly through the darkness, smashing into random obstacles in his path. He didn't know where he was going or why, all he knew was that he had to get out of there!
Far behind him, the clanking footsteps of guards echoed off the walls. Numerous beams of light shined out at him from the darkness, trying to find his elusive form. He shied away from them, retreating even further into the darkness.
'Stupid stupid stupid!' He berated himself mentally. Why hadn't he high- tailed it out of there when the power went out? Of COURSE the guards would check that room first---that was where the power came from, after all! Why hadn't he left when he had the chance, instead of sitting there frozen to the floor in surprise?
It seemed that he might lose them. It seemed he might escape.
Then he tripped.
"Waaaaagh!" Sonic yelled as he tumbled head-over-heels into a wall. Wham. Colored stars and lights flashed before his vision. He reeled backwards, stumbling dizzily around the area while he tried to make the multiple images he was seeing go away. Meanwhile, the guards behind him arrived on the scene.
Sonic didn't notice them, since he was hunched down on the floor and cradling his head in both hands. A major headache was starting to form in his brain.
"Freeze!" One guard, the leader of the unit, yelled while pointing his spear at Sonic. "Don't move!"
"I couldn't if I wanted to," Sonic growled. "Get that light outta my face!"
"Hey, check this out!" Someone from off to the side called out. The light receded, and Sonic began the arduous process of blinking the spots out of his eyes.
"What is it, Koi?" The leader asked while walking over to the Koopa that had made the exclamation.
Koi pointed down at a spot on the floor that he was shining his light at. "Look at what that guy tripped over!"
Curious, the leader bent down to take a closer look. The object seemed to be made of metal, judging from the way it reflected light. It was shaped similarly to the intruder they'd just been chasing, with blue spikes poking out of the back of its head.
Suddenly the image conjured up a very vivid memory in the Koopa's mind...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Hey, Karl! Something just came through a portal!"
"Really?" Karl asked while glancing at the long rut in the dirt that led to where his friend Koi was bending over an object on the ground. "Looks like it had a rough landing."
"No kidding. It doesn't seem to be working, either."
Karl walked over and glanced at the mysterious object. It was a very sophisticated, blue chrome robot that was far too complex for him to understand. It didn't move.
"I doubt we'll be able to use it for anything except scrap. Let's take it to the junkpile." Karl announced. "Here, I'll grab these feet-things and you grab those other things at the top." He pointed at a pair of steel hands that lay limp at the robot's sides.
"Alright, then." Koi agreed. They nodded at each other, heaved the heavy machinery up with a grunt, and carted it over to a nearby canyon that contained the aforementioned junkpile.
"On the count of three, we'll toss it in." Karl explained. "Okay?"
"Okay." Koi shrugged.
"One!" They began to swing the robot from side to side.
"Two!" They swung harder.
"Three!"
The machine went sailing into the air in a perfect arc, before hitting the chasm's bottom and impaling itself on top of several sharp, pointy rocks.
Both Karl and Koi waited to see if the robot would move. When it didn't, they gave each other a high-five and walked away.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A sense of nightmare hit Karl as he realized he was looking at the same robot, except it was now repaired and functional.
"Dang flashlight." The guard next to Karl muttered while banging a hand against the side of his torch. "The batteries are dying again." He hit the flashlight again, and the light coming from it went out. "Aw, crud!" He yelled.
The image of the repaired robot vanished as the light extinguished itself, but it still stood out vividly in Karl's mind. Slowly, ever so slowly, he pointed his own flashlight at the robot.
-----------------------------------
Main systems online.
Loading backup systems...please wait.
..........
Backup systems online.
Activating personality software.
...........
.....what happened?
Where am I?
What's going on?
WARNING! Unidentified organisms located on radar!
What the...?
Actvating secondary systems.....
Video feed online.
I blinked; there we go, now I can see again. In the corner of my eye, several glaring red dots stood out on my radar. I turned my head to look at a couple of them who were leaning over me.
------------------------------------
Two black voids on the robot's face lit up with glowing pupils, lighting up the area with an eerie red tint. They flickered for a moment, then focused on Karl.
"Uh...Koi?" The Koopa asked the guard next to him nervously while starting to edge away, his hand holding the flashlight beginning to shake slightly.
------------------------------------
Hmm, they were Koopas. They looked familiar, too.
Wait a second...
Video logs accessed
Playing video file 44.2232.6798.
Analyzing image in frame 107865...
Comparing to current video feed...
98% chance of identical match
....
...well, this is an interesting development. So these were the @%#$s that threw me off that cliff, eh?
...'Oh, sweet irony. Thine humor bring great mirth.'
I'm going to enjoy this.
------------------------------------
"Koi?" Karl repeated urgently, trying to get his friend's attention. Somehow, he knew that the blue robot recognized him...
Koi was busy hitting his flashlight, trying to get it working again. "Yeah Karl?" He replied absently without looking up.
"Uh...did this thing have glowing eyes when you found it?"
Koi looked up, saw the activated robot, and visibly went a shade paler than before. "No..."
Karl's hand shook so heavily that he dropped the flashlight a split-second later, redirecting its illumination elsewhere while casting them into darkness.
The sound of coming death thundered in the pause that followed, and Karl could have sworn he heard a distant voice laughing at him.
The eyes attacked.
-------------------------------------
Sonic's ears pricked up as the sounds of a nearby struggle reached them. A clatter as something plastic fell onto the floor, then a couple muted thumps as something heavier fell a few seconds later. He lifted his head to see what was happening.....
.....A moment later, he wished he hadn't.
Metal Sonic stood mere feet away from him, red eyes burning like the fires of Hell. An activated flashlight that lay nearby cast a dim light onto the robot's body, revealing a dark fluid (Sonic hoped it was just oil) that dripped slowly from his metallic claws. The robot shifted his position to reveal what was behind him, and Sonic was hit with a sudden wave of nausea. Against the far wall lay the disfigured corpses of the guards, throats slashed and gushing blood. They hadn't even had time to scream.
"Hello, Ssssssonic." The machination hissed, beginning to stalk slowly forward. "What a surprise; I didn't expect to find you here."
"H-how...?" Sonic choked, quickly standing up and backpedaling away. "How'd you get here?!" He demanded at last.
"I have been in this Zone far longer than you realize, rodent. But as for how I came to be in this particular building..." The robot paused his advance for a moment, hesitating. "I was.delivered by a friend, if you must know."
"What do you mean? What 'friend'?"
Metal didn't answer, but instead continued closing the distance between them. The robot's red eyes flared, and reflexes that had been honed from years of sabotage missions told Sonic to duck.
One of Mecha's clawed hands swept through the air above Sonic's head, their razor-sharp fingers reaching for his throat. Heart pounding with adrenaline, Sonic dove to the side and snatched up the activated flashlight on the floor before rolling to his feet, ready to fight.
Mecha gazed levelly at his opponent for a few seconds before thrusting forward in a football tackle, using his rocket engine to propel himself through the air without touching the ground. Sonic's back slammed into the wall, and all the air in his lungs evacuated with a whoosh. Breathless, he collapsed to his side and gasped for oxygen like a beached fish.
Even though Mecha's metal face was incapable of complex movements, Sonic could practically feel him sneering in triumph. A metal foot collided with his side as Mecha gave him a couple good kicks. Grunting in pain, Sonic reached out and grabbed the foot with his free hand as it flew towards him for the third time, then pulled hard. Mecha tumbled over onto his back, allowing Sonic time to get back to his feet and put some room between them.
A laser bolt flashed past Sonic's head and collided with the ceiling in a shower of dust and rocks. Sonic mentally cursed, realizing that Mecha was using his built-in lasers to fire at him while the robot got up. Another laser swept past, then another that merited ducking.
It's time to end this, Sonic thought with a growl. He spun around to face Mecha, and went into a sudden spindash. Mecha avoided the attack with a simple sideways boost of his rocket engine, then reached out and grabbed one of Sonic's legs as he passed.
Surprise hit Sonic in the face, along with the floor. He impacted it with a strangled grunt, then looked back to see what had tripped him. "Hey, leggo!" He yelled while kicking futilely with his captured limb. Mecha dodged, then grabbed Sonic's other foot with his free hand. He swung Sonic up by his legs and around in a circle, then released when the blue hedgehog was aimed at the wall.
Sonic's head exploded in a kaleidoscope of colors and sounds. He yelled in pain, clutching at his face with both hands as he tried to regain his bearings. His senses suddenly screamed for him to move, and he dove forward in an evasive rolling maneuver as a red-painted, steel shoe slammed into the spot where his head had been.
Realizing he'd missed, Mecha retracted his foot without noticing the deep imprint it had left in the wall. Sonic's momentum carried him forward in- between Mecha's legs, and he stood back up behind the robot just in time to see a fist flying at his face.
Two seconds and twenty feet later, Sonic skidded to a halt on the floor of the hallway. He sat up dizzily, shaking the random spots out of his vision. Glancing upward , he spotted a twin set of glowing eyes flying at him via rocket engine. He glanced at his right hand, which had been holding the flashlight this whole time. He looked at Mecha again. By now, the robot was almost on top of him. Sonic gritted his teeth in determination.
The flashlight sailed through the air with the greatest of ease, nailing Mecha directly in the forehead. Direct hit.
----------------------------------
ERROR! Severe damage to main video feed! Activating backup systems to compensate...
Auxillary video feed offline. Shutdown of main video commencing. Transferring power to auto-repair...
My vision flickered and dissolved into static. Snarling in the extreme rage I felt at that moment, I glanced at my radar instead. The rodent had gotten up and was circling around me to attack from behind, thinking I was blind. Well, he'll get an unpleasant surprise...
--------------------------
Sonic stood up, noticing that the red pupils of Mecha's eyes had gone out- only the orange flame from the robot's engine gave light to the area now. Mecha grunted as his vision was lost, and lashed out with his left arm in a blind rage while holding his right arm up to shield his face from further attack. Sonic nimbly hopped out of the way of the counterattack and circled around to strike again.
A whoosh of air, and Mecha's rocket engine ignited in Sonic's face. Sonic screamed before he could stop himself and fell backwards, holding his smoking hands up over his head.
Reality went haywire at that moment.
All motion abruptly ceased; Sonic was locked in mid-fall, Mecha in turning his head to see the damage he'd caused. The landscape began to shift and ripple like water, bending and stretching at the seams. The disturbance grew greater, beginning to affect the statuelike forms of Sonic and Mecha, as well.
At the center of it all, a hole opened. A blurry, reddish shape leapt through before it closed a second later, and all returned to normal.
Time restarted, and Sonic fell onto his back. A new form now stood protectively in front of him, shielding him from further attack. Mecha blinked in stunned amazement when he turned around and spotted the newcomer. "It can't be--!"
The stranger pointed one massive, spiked hand at the robot. "Leave. Now." It commanded in a familiar male voice. A stream of green energy flew out from the hand and formed a greenish portal around the robot, cutting off Mecha's yell of outrage as it closed and left nothing behind.
Sonic thought he recognized the newcomer's voice from somewhere, and made an attempt to prove his theory. "Knux...?" He asked weakly, before passing out where he lay.
The stranger glanced down at Sonic, and worry creased its brow. "He's hurt worse than I thought." He murmured to himself as he kneeled down to check Sonic's wounds.
A sudden tremor shook the fortress, causing dirt and loose stones to fall down from the ceiling. The stranger cursed. "I'm too late. We've gotta get out of here....." A shimmering green portal, similar to the one that had taken Mecha, enveloped them both and disappeared, leaving an empty and battle-marred hallway behind.
----------------------------------
RUUUUMMMBBBLLLE.....
"Whoa, what the HECK was that?!" Kamek yelped as the shaking threw him onto the floor. No reply came from the dead computer in front of him, which had shut off when the power died.
Kamek began to get back to his feet when another, stronger shockwave ripped through the building and threw him back down. "OWCH! Dang, that hurts!" He grumbled.
A small aftershock vibrated the floor slightly. "What's going on?!" The MagiKoopa demanded, looking around the room from his position on the floor. "The only thing that'd cause an earthquake around here would be....." Realization came to Kamek and produced the only logical explanation for the shaking. ".....Oh, crap." Kamek reached into his robes and brought out his wand, waving it around with much muttering. A rush of sparkles, and he teleported out of the room.
----------------------------------
RUUUUMMMBBBLLLE.....
"Yikes!" Mario yelled in surprise as the tremor sent him reeling into a garbage pile. "What the heck?! Bowser, what's going on?!?"
But the Koopa King seemed just as surprised at this turn of events as Mario was. "Heck if I know!" He growled, leaning on the wall he'd just torn a hole through. "KAMEK, GET IN HERE!"
Amazingly (although Mario privately thought it was a coincidence), Kamek appeared above their heads on his new broomstick at that moment. "Everyone!" He exclaimed in panic. "We've got to get out of here, NOW! I'm gonna teleport us, so hold on!"
"Hey, what's going on?" Kirby demanded while poking his head down through the hole in the ceiling. "What happened while we were gone? Mario?"
"Kamek, hold it!" Mario spoke up over the Magikoopa's chanting. "The princesses are on the second floor! Take them too, okay?"
"WHAT?! They've been here this whole time?!?" Bowser bellowed a split second before vanishing in a rush of shining sparkles.
"What the--? Hey, what happened to him?" Mega Man exclaimed before he, too, vanished.
One at a time, every person in the room was teleported out of the castle and to the foot of the hill which it stood upon. Last to arrive were the princesses and Bowser, then Kamek himself. The MajiKoopa dropped to one knee, panting from the exertion of using the spell.
"Hey, what was THAT all about, huh?!" Kapi screeched. She marched right up to Kamek and grabbed him around the neck in both hands, shaking him violently. "Just-what-the-heck-are-you-doing?!" She yelled, punctuating each word with a shake. "You-could-have-gotten-us-killed-you-crazy-Koopa-"
A clawed hand on her shoulder stopped her tirade. She glanced up into the monstrous face of Bowser, and her eyes went wide. "Put him down, Kapi. I think I know why he got us out of there, and if I'm right, he saved our lives." The Koopa King rumbled.
Kapi released Kamek at once, backing quickly away with a meek expression and an embarassed blush. Bowser nodded approvingly at her and walked up to Kamek, himself. "Kamek, you DID remember to teleport my children out first, right?" He asked quickly, a worried undertone apparent in his voice.
Kamek hung his head, and Bowser's heart sank down clear to his clawed toes with the reply. "I'm sorry.....Lord Bowser.....but I only had.....enough MP for.....one mass teleport....." Kamek panted.
Bowser suddenly stood up, eyes wide with panic as he turned to look at the castle. "NO! KIDS!" He yelled desperately, starting to run up the hill towards the castle. "NOOOO!"
"King Bowser! Wait!" Kapi squeaked in fear, running after the King.
"It's too.....late....." Kamek sighed. "Look....." He pointed at the castle, and everyone turned to see what was happening.
Mouths became unhinged. Eyes bulged. Peach clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle a scream.
A massive, swirling, purple portal had appeared around the castle, and was slowly shrinking with the building inside of it. In moments, the castle had completely vanished.
"No--!" Bowser cried as he reached the top of the hill, now bare and empty. "No--! Kids! My children! Noo--!" He sank to his knees, weeping uncontrollably. "No.....not them...take me, instead...please...not them..." He sobbed.
The silence at the foot of the hill was deafening. A slight breeze stirred among the rocks littered at their feet as everyone shared mutual looks of shock with each other. Finally, Mario quietly spoke.
"Kamek....I think it's about time you told us what's going on."
"I agree." Mega Man chimed in.
Kamek sighed again. "It's quite a story, if you have the patience to listen to it. Are you sure you want to hear it?"
"Yes." Kirby answered grimly.
"Very well, then....."
NEXT CHAPTER: The answers to all your questions are revealed. Why are the portals popping up? Where did they come from? What is their purpose? What happened to Castle Koopa? Did Link and Luigi make it out of there before it vanished? And where in the blazes is Pikachu?
Find out all this, and more, in.....
(dramatic chord)
....Crossover Saga, Chapter 12: Deadline. Coming soon to a website near you!
(orchestral fanfare)
.....man, that was SO cheesy.....
Author's Notes of DOOM! Mwahahahahaha!!
Protoman: Greetings, readers! This chapter has got a very special Author's Note after it, 'cause today we've got something special planned for you! Don't ask me what it is, though. I have no clue. Hopefully, Stoney will fill us in on the details when he gets here.
(Stoney walks onscreen dragging a colossal, enormous, gargantuan, gigantic, humongous, massive, immense-)
Stoney: Get on with it!!
(--burlap bag behind him.)
Protoman: [raises eyebrow] What's in there? A body?
Stoney: Yes. [tips bag over, and THOUSANDS of letters spill out] It's a body that looks suspiciously like a large pile of letters.
Protoman: [gaping] What the HECK?
Stoney: You've got mail! Or more specifically, I've got mail!
(Knuckles walks onscreen)
Knuckles: [notices the letters] Holy--! Are all those for YOU?!
Stoney: Yep! C'mon, let's read 'em!
(Protoman's arm starts emitting a beeping noise. He looks at it and presses a button, making the sound stop.)
Protoman: No can do, buddyroe. I just got a message from Dr. Light- apparently Mega Man needs me to save his bacon again. [sighs] A brother's job is never done! Oh well, seeya!
(Protoman warps out)
Stoney: What about you, Knuckles?
Knuckles: Sorry, but I've gotta get back to the Master Emerald. Maybe some other time, 'kay?
(Knuckles walks off-screen)
Stoney: Hmph! Fine, I'll just read them myself! [picks up a letter and reads the return address] Hmm. A letter from Yoshiman! All right! [rips open the letter and accidentally rips up the contents in the process]
Stoney: Oops...
(five minutes and lots of scotch tape later...)
Stoney: There we go, good as new!
(Metal Sonic enters)
Stoney: Ah, Mecha! Just in time! Would you like to help me read the mail?
Mecha: [shrugs] Very well. [sits down and opens one letter]
Stoney: Ok, thanks! [starts to read his letter out loud] Yoshiman says:
"How terribly exciting. As always, it's been a real pantload---
Stoney: Uh, what's a 'pantload'? Please tell me it's not what I think it is, because if it is then that remark would be an insult. Hang on, the letter continues:
---And I'm going to warn you beforehand. . . if you include FFVII characters without including FFIV or FFVI characters, I'm going to hurt you. With this wet sponge."
Stoney: [gasps] Oh NO! Not the wet sponge! Anything but THAT! [bursts out laughing]
Metal Sonic: [blinks] ...Error, does not compute. What is a 'FFIV'?
Stoney: Ah, never mind. What about your letter?
Metal Sonic: I have yet to read it.
Stoney: Well, go ahead! I'm not stopping you!
Metal Sonic: Fine. [reads, gasps in horror] Oh NO!
Stoney: What's wrong? What's it say?
Metal Sonic: [tries to stuff letter into a hidden compartment on his arm] Nothing, forget it.
Stoney: [trying to get at the compartment] Hey, c'mon, let me see!
Metal Sonic: No! Stop it!
Stoney: Brackets, Parentheses, I need your help here!
(the letter magically appears in Stoney's paw)
Metal Sonic: What the--?! [checks compartment to find it's empty] Dang it!!
Stoney: Thanks, you guys!
(No problem.) [Ditto.]
Stoney: [reads address] Ah, it's from Angel-Weasel Woman! Groovy! She says:
"*happy squeal* Mecha! ^O^ *huggles bot who has this "For-the-Love-of-God- Help-Me" look* He's here! I hope he gets a good part."
Stoney: [starts to laugh]
Metal Sonic: [muttering] I hate getting hugs...
Stoney: Aw, I think it's nice! You've got fans, isn't that awesome?
Metal: You'd think it would be, wouldn't you?
Stoney: ........what's THAT supposed to mean?
Group of Rabid Mecha Fans: [screaming] OH MY GOD, LOOK! IT'S MECHIE!!
Stoney: [blinks, raises one eyebrow] "Mechie"?
Metal Sonic: Ack! They've found me! [starts to run away from the fans] SOMEBODY HELP MEEEE!
Group of Rabid Mecha Fans: [start to chase Mecha, still screaming] COME HERE SO WE CAN HUG YOU, YOU BIG CUTIE!!!
Mecha: NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
(Rabid Mecha Fans chase Metal Sonic off-screen)
Stoney: ...... [bursts out laughing]
(Mecha flies back onscreen and hits Stoney upside the head)
Stoney: OW!
Metal Sonic: Stop laughing! This isn't funny!
Group of Rabid Mecha Fans: THERE HE IS!!
Metal Sonic: AHHHH!!
(Mecha gets chased off-screen again)
Stoney: ......geez, that hurt. Oh well, who's next? [picks up a sheet of paper that isn't in an envelope] Ooh! It's from Billy-Bob Burmstrang, a.k.a. DragonBoy! All right! He says:
"I guess Kirby likes being called powderpuff about as much as Cole, huh? 0_0"
Stoney: [nods] Yep, that's true. I was hoping you'd notice that! For all the readers who are unfamiliar with who Cole is, he's a human-turned- Dreamlander from Billy's crossover fanfic. In the story, Cole got called the same thing Kirby did, with, um......unfortunate.....results. So remember, people: never, EVER call any member of the Dreamlander species a "Powderpuff"! It'll do ya good!
Kirby: (from offscreen) WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL ME?!
Stoney: [sweatdrops] Uh, nothing! [laughs nervously] Um...next! [tosses letter over his shoulder, picks up a new one]
Stoney: Did I just pick up a new shoulder??
(No, you picked up a new LETTER.)
Stoney: Oh, okay! [opens it and reads] This letter was written by a bloke called Echoes of the Mind. He or she says:
"Not too shabby, but you mocked the metal. I'll let it slide this time, but watch out for the flying puppies."
Stoney: [blinks in confusion] Ummm...the heck? Contrary to what you may think, Echoes, I have nothing against steel, silicon, iron, pewter, nickel, titanium, aluminum, tin, brass, lead, copper, mercury, silver, bronze, gold, platinum, stainless steel, or any other metals you can think of! Although it might SEEM that way when I'm really mad at my slow-as-heck modem, it's not true! Honestly!
(Well said.)
Stoney: Thank you. [gets smacked in the side of the head by a flying puppy] OW! What the--?? Did you do that, Parentheses?
(Who, US? No!)
(Stoney looks around, sees the puppy, immediately hisses)
Stoney: AAHH! DOG! SOMEBODY CALL THE POUND!
(What's your problem?)
Stoney: As anybody who's read my bio knows, I'm a cat!
(the puppy looks up at Stoney with big, cute eyes)
Stoney: [pauses, then sighs] Aww, it's just a little kid. Even I can't stay mad at something so cute! [kneels down so he's eye-level with the puppy] Here, doggy-doggy-doggie!
(Puppy's eyes turn blood-red, then it leaps forward and bites Stoney on the nose)
Stoney: .............
(Uh-oh...)
Stoney: ......EEEEYYYYOOOOWWWW!! [Hops around frantically with the dog hanging on to his nose] OWOWOWOWOW! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF! AHHHH! SOMEBODY HELP ME!!
(The evil, demonic puppy vanishes in a puff of non-existence)
Stoney: [sighs, rubs his sore nose] Whew, thanks Parentheses.
(Welcome.)
Stoney: I wonder where the heck that puppy came from...oh, well, new letter! [picks up an envelope] Ooh, another letter from AnT! He says:
"Again with the cliffhanger! Damn it! I should've known Sonic would act like that in front of MegaMan. Hope you update REAL SOON!!"
Stoney: MWA HA HA! I am the suspense MASTER! You shall all bow down before the awesome power of my cliffhangers! [blinks, suddenly normal again] Anyhoo, what did you originally think Sonic would act like? A toaster?
(Sonic drops onscreen from above)
Stoney: [staring at Sonic in amazement] How'd you do that?
Sonic: Chaos Control.
Stoney: Oh.
Sonic: Anyway, if you make me act like that, I swear I'll sic Omochao on you!
Stoney: Act like what?
Sonic: Like... [sighs] Just forget it.
Stoney: Okey-dokey! [picks up...ah, you know it by now] Well, whaddaya know? A new reader! His name is Travis Lewis X, Emerald Dragon!
Sonic: Ooooh, a dragon! I wonder if he's related to Dulcy?
Stoney: Who?
Sonic: A friend of mine. C'mon, let's read the letter already!
Stoney: Alright. It says:
"This is a GREAT fiction. All the characters are well represented, and the plot is tight.
Heh, I THOUGHT Kirby was a little more than meets the eye...
Haven't seen Tango in a LONG time. KITTY! ^o^
Mario seems to be quite IC. And Luigi eating a salad was funnah! ^_~
FINISH! OR I SEND THE LEATHERBACK DOGS AFTER YOU!"
Stoney: [cringes] Ack! Not dogs! Those are worse than puppies!
Sonic: [Scratches head in confusion] What's a 'fiction'?
Stoney: [reads letter again] Hmm...'the plot is tight'...wait a second. Plot?? [Slaps forehead] D'oh! I knew I forgot something! Oh, well. Maybe I could include a plot in the later chapters...
Sonic: What're you talking about? What chapters?
Stoney: ...of course, a good plot always requires good foreshadowing, so if I just start one here it'll seem too abrupt. Maybe I should just redo the whole story...
Sonic: Are you even listening to me??
Stoney: ...but that'll take to long to do. It took me long enough just to get this chapter done, Lord knows how long it'll take me to do the other 10...
Sonic: That does it! I've had enough! [walks off-screen in disgust]
Stoney: ...actually, now that I think about it, there is a plot. But it's a long one; we're still somewhere in the conflict part of it. [reads letter yet again] Ah yes, Tango. The much-underrated cat from the Game Boy game Mega Man V. I really don't like how he's been shoved out of the spotlight while Rush gets all the attention, so I decided to include him in this fic. Just you wait---Tango's gonna get a MAJOR part in the story later on! Yahoo!
Stoney: [Picks up another letter) Another new reader, whoo hoo! M. E. Gibbs writes:
"MY GOD THE CHARACTERS HAVE PERSONALITY!
What a novel concept....
Sorry, ignore my cynasism (and spelling for that matter...)
An EXCELLENT piece so far. You can really feel the characters, they aren't just there for cameos. Each character has their own problems, difficulties, and conflicts, not just the main character, which is one of the things that makes this story so fantastic. This keyboard I'm typing on really sucks...but that has nothing to do with your story so, yeah, I'll just shut up. Can't wait to see what happens next and how everything ties together! Keep up the fantastic writing!"
Stoney: To respond to this letter, I'll need to be serious for a bit.
(Is that even possible?)
Stoney: Yes, so be quiet! Ahem. A wise man once said: "Bad characters suck." Or maybe that was my English teacher, I'm not sure. After playing video games for years, I've grown increasingly appalled at the lack of general information for some of the most popular characters in gaming history. Nintendo never told us where Mario or Luigi came from; Capcom managed to form a reasonably good origin story for Mega Man, but struck out big-time when it came to describing everything else about him; as for Sega, they did a lousy job in explaining the physics of their characters. And these are just a few of the inconsistencies!
Something had to be done.
So I decided to try filling the gaps in the information myself. And I decided to do so through a story. I didn't want to write a series, but instead one epic novel. How was I to incorporate so many characters from so many different universes together in one story without making the book longer than the Guinness Book of World Records?
Of course! A crossover fic!
The rest is history. What you've read so far has been a monumental effort on my part to create viable personalities for these characters. I've tried to create explanations for some of their vaguer aspects, and conjured up possible reactions the characters would go through in certain circumstances. I'm glad you appreciate the end product. Thanks for the wonderful compliments, they really encourage me to keep on writing.
By the way, M.E., what do you think of the name of Knuckles' theme from Sonic Adventure? Did that song really come from you?
Stoney: [picks up another letter] Yay, another new reader! I'm so happy! This one is named Aura Starfire! She says:
"Wow! So far I am amazed, this a FANTASTIC fanfiction, the interaction between the characters is spot on (except for those I don't know, since I haven't played their games) and it's got me hanging on every word. :) Keep on going!"
Stoney: [awed voice] Amazing! I don't believe it! I........I've got......FANS!
(a red man with goat legs, a pointy tail, and horns on his head appears out of nowhere)
Man: Excuse me, but would you be the person responsible for my domain freezing over just now?
Stoney: What? Who are you?
Man: The Devil. [brandishes a pitchfork in Stoney's direction] Now, I repeat: Did YOU cause the sudden drop in temperature down below?
Stoney: No! It's not MY fault!
Devil: Tell that to them. [points at a group of pigs flying overhead]
Stoney: Parentheses, please get these guys out of here!
(Well, since you asked so nicely...)
(the devil and pigs all vanish in a puff of non-existence)
Stoney: Thanks.
(That's the third time we've helped you. You owe us.)
Stoney: I know, I know.
(Stoney stands up, does the funky chicken, recites the Gettysburg Address backwards and sits down)
Stoney: I did NOT just do that!
(Yes, you did.)
Stoney: No, I didn't! I couldn't recite the whole Gettysburg Address FORWARDS if I wanted to, let alone backwards!
(An anvil falls on Stoney's head as punishment for his insolence)
Stoney: WHAT?! [looks up] Oh, crud...
(WHAM!!)
Stoney: [tosses anvil off him] You jerks! You did that on purpose!
(Stoney spontaneously combusts, thus shutting him up)
Stoney: No, YOU shut up! Why I oughtta-- [combusts] AAAAHHH!
(Bass walks onscreen)
Bass: Hey Stoney, how's it--HOLY CRAP! FIRE!
(Bass runs back off-screen)
Bass: [from off-screen] AAAHHH! HELP! FIRE! WAKE THE PRESIDENT! MAN THE LIFEBOATS! CALL THE GAMEMASTER! THERE'S A FIRE GOING ON! AHHH!
(fire goes out)
Stoney: [now crispy-fried and smoking] Ow... [coughs] You meanies...
(Suddenly, a--)
Stoney: OKAY, OKAY! I take it back! You're the best set of parentheses I've ever used, okay?!
(Much better.)
Stoney: Sheesh. Talk about sensitive. I think I'll use the brackets from now on, they're more agreeable...oh crap, did I just say that out loud?!
(a wet sponge the size of a tow truck falls on Stoney, burying him in the ground)
Stoney: [muffled] OW!!
(I think he's finished talking, for now at least. Thanks for writing in, guys, and thanks for reading so far! You're one of the main reasons Stoney keeps writing this silly fanfic! Keep on writing, and we'll answer more of your reviews next time! Until then, see ya!)
Stoney: [muffled] Are you going to help me out from underneath this thing?
(No.)