I do not own Teletubbies, Little Red Riding Hood, Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, Harry Potter and/or the Order of the Phoenix, property of J.K. Rowling. I also do not own Singing in the Rain or the Wall Street Journal, although I will (oh yes I will!) in the near future. (It's all part of my plan to take over the world.)
I do own Mrs. Granny Hedgehog.
Also, for part 2 of this chapter (I combined 2 chapters to make this one,) I do not own Robin Williams or Arnold Schwarzenegger (can't spell that), Ranma ½, (property of Rumiko Takahashi) but I do own Granny Hedgehog, Sonic's mom! …I mean grandmom. I've already pointed that out, haven't I.
And, of course, I do not own Sonic the Hedgehog, which belongs to SEGA.
Cool Fact #4: 'Singing In The Rain' is a movie about a movie. How complex is that?
"So, we got everything?" Sonic asked. Shadow squinted and scrutinized the rather absurdly long checklist. It fell all the way to the floor, and across the living room, where it did three loops around the couch then made its way down the hall to the bathroom.
"I think so," Shadow said slowly, "but maybe we should run through it, one more time. You know, just to make sure."
"Sure!" Sonic agreed. Tails nodded vigorously, his two tails twirling behind him.
"'Kay!" Shadow pointed with a gloved hand at the first item on the considerable list. "First and foremost on the list, sunglasses with 100 UV ray protection!"
"Check!" Shadow, Sonic and Tails all put on their ultra-cool shades.
"So cool," Shadow whispered.
"Gotta look cool!" Sonic boasted.
"So hip," Tails murmured. Shadow tut-tutted, and Sonic momentarily took off his glasses to give him a look that patently asked, "How whack are you, brudda!" without vocalization.
"So, next on the list is…" Shadow took off his shades to be able to read Tails' small, neat cursive.
"Ha ha! You're not cool anymore!" Sonic laughed. He had already replaced his shades to regain his ultra-coolness.
"Shut up!" Shadow snarled. "Next on the list is… is…" Shadow face faulted, and stared blankly at the list.
"A teletubbies blanky?"
Sonic's eyes lit up. "Twinkie!" The blue blur zoomed to his room, leaving a trail of dust. He returned two seconds later with Twinkie.
Twinkie wasn't really a teletubbies blanky, oh no. He had stars in the corners, and little blue threads created stitched designs down his sides. In the middle of 'him' there was a round circle, like the circle in the middle of the Japanese flag, except it was all white.
"Twinkie?" Shadow asked incredulously, sounding very much like an indignant cheese connoisseur who had just been told that the bleu cheese he had sampled was Swiss by an amateur.
"What'd you name it after, Sonic?" Tails asked mechanically. Shadow wrinkled his nose.
"Twinkies," Sonic explained, "the only substance to ever survive a nuclear explosion."
"Huh?"
"Nothin'. Let's just keep goin'." Sonic stuffed Twinkie into his side pocket – yes, that's right, into his FUR, since he has no pockets.
"Where are you keeping it?" asked the kitsune in amazement.
"Hey! Invasion of privacy there, bub!" the azure hedgehog complained.
"Sorry."
"Thas'okay." Sonic said this while secretly putting Tails on his hit list.
"Okay, next on the list is…" Shadow was now wearing his reading glasses, and was all dressed up like the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood, "the Wall Street Journal."
"Gotta keep track of my stocks!" Sonic said enthusiastically. Shadow stared at him.
"Sonic, we don't need that."
"Yes we do!"
"The stock market will hold up an extra day or two, Sonic, I promise you!" Shadow assured loudly.
Sonic's face fell, and he sighed. "Sigh…
"Okay. So we don't need Dave." Sonic threw the newspaper back. On the very front of it, in big bold letters, it said, STOCK MARKET CRASHES DUE TO FOURTH WORLD WAR. Unfortunately, the blue blur did not happen to glance upon this headline. He turned and looked at Shadow defiantly.
Shadow stared nonchalantly right back.
"We also don't need Twinkie."
"Donchu be talkin' 'bout my momma!" Sonic warned, slapping his hip. "Ohhhh! Ohhh!"
"She's not your momma!" Tails said in a screechy voice. Shadow cringed.
"No, sonny, I am! …Your grandmamma, at least," a little ol' hedgehog wearing thick reading glasses and dressed like the grandmother from LRRH.
"LOTR!" Tails exclaimed. "I'm a HUGE Legolas fan!"
"No, no, no, Tails! LRRH!" Shadow explained with renewed passion. "Little Red Riding Hood! Stop reading the narrations!"
"Oh." Tails' face fell. "Well, that's cool, I guess…"
"My, my," Mrs. Hedgehog said, "what's all the fuss about? Here, sonny, have 'The Return of the King'. Finished it last night after rereading 'Order of the Phoenix.'"
"Wow, Ma!" Sonic was in awe of his grandmother's super-speedy reading capabilities. Who cares if she wasn't fast on her feet? Her ability to speed-read was the envy of college students everywhere.
"Now, little sugar," Mrs. H pointed to Shadow expectantly, "don't we have a Little Red Riding Hood audition to get to?"
"Right you are, Granny." Shadow took the elderly woman's arm, and the went skipping down the street via 'Singing in the Rain'.
"What tha?" Sonic gasped. "HEY YOU! SHADOW! You can't try out for a play NOW! You barely even know the STORYLINE for Little Red Riding Hood!"
Tails stopped sucking on the tips of his tails (a bad habit he'd picked up when he was just a wee wisp of a thing) and looked at Sonic curiously. "He doesn't?" he repeated, incredulous.
Sonic nodded. "I was reading Little Red Riding Hood to him, and he kept asking, 'When do the squirrels come in?' and 'What about the Schwartz?' and my personal favorite, 'Why doesn't Arnold make a good governor!' But I… Hey, wait! He's getting away!" Sonic shook his gloved foot at his retreating ebony-furred friend. "STOP HITTING ON MY MOM! …ACTUALLY THAT'S MY GRANDMOM! …Dang it… I guess we'll have to wait until he's back…. Crap."
"How can you mistake your grandma for your ma?" Tails asked, raising one eyebrow. Sonic glared at him.
"Don't patronize me," he spat. Then he sighed, and wiped his hand across his face. "…Look," he said, "Let's just play tennis or something… I have some cool tennis skirts we can slip into. No one has to know…"
Now it was Tails' turn to return the look that so clearly asked the tacit question, "How whack are you, brudda!"
Trois heures après…
"I can't understand that," complained Sonic.
"Fine," Tails said. "I'll change the code so that it reads in English."
Three hours later…
"Weeeee're back!" Shadow announced as he strolled into the room.
"Finally!" Tails exclaimed monotonously. "Did you make it?"
"Naw," Shadow said, suddenly moody, "I lost to Robin Williams."
"Dang!" Sonic exclaimed, in awe. "What part did he get?"
"Uh…" Shadow looked at a cast list. "…Guy in village number two."
"Oh…" Sonic whispered to Tails loudly behind his hand, "Small part." Shadow glared, as Sonic had been whispering quite loud. Sonic started to whistle innocuously.
"That's already, sweetie," Granny Hedgehog (yes, that's her real name) cooed. "You'll make it next time, I promise!"
"But how do you know, sensei?" Shadow looked up at her in awe.
"Because, grasshopper, you're hot! And girls will do anything for a bishonen!" Granny skipped out of the room. "Ta-ta!"
Sonic's jaw hit the floor.
"She's such a sweet little lady," Shadow told Tails, "with spunk. She arm-wrestled Arnold Schwarzenegger while we were there. He was trying out for the woodcutter. He got the part." Shadow sighed. "Oh well. At least he can do something…"
"A-HUMPH!" Both fox and ebony hedgehog turned to regard Sonic. "While you two were talking, I took the liberty of checking off everything else on the list."
"That's speedy," Shadow commented. Sonic gave him a cheesy grin.
"Yeah, I know. That's because I am so fast. I am like lightning. I am like wind." Shadow coughed politely. "…Sorry. Anyway," Sonic continued, going through the list, "we've got our toothbrushes, toothpaste, sports car and our Ranma ½ manga, and our five 3 ½ inch floppy disks." Sonic looked up. "But we're out of mascara. Sorry, Shadow."
"S'okay," Shadow replied. Tails looked at him curiously.
"What do you need mascara for?" he inquired inquisitively.
"It's hard to be a goth," Shadow replied mysteriously. Tails gulped.
"Oh."
"And now!" Sonic said. "The last item on the list, is—"
"Did you get my mascara yet?" Shadow demanded, raising his eyebrows slightly. Sonic looked at him, extremely aggravated.
"No!" he snapped. "You said you didn't need any! And now—"
"That was ten seconds ago!" Shadow tried to look pathetic. "I need some now! Please?"
"…You look like a cow."
Shadow threw something at Sonic, spitting the word 'idiot' in Japanese. "NOW!" he screeched. The Blue Blur sighed before rushing out of the room, leaving behind a trail of dust and the word 'ZOOM' written in white, Comic Sans font.
"Weird," Shadow commented, mellowed.
"It's very weird," the two-tailed kitsune commented. "It's been over two chapters, and the real plot hasn't even started yet. Wow…"
"It looks like we're about to have a subplot."
"Yeah, we get those a lot…" Tails said, as if he was commenting on the weather. "So what do you want to do?"
Shadow shrugged. "Well, I'm going to eat a triple cheeseburger. But after that… How about Chinese Checkers?"
"That sounds great!" Tails replied. "An afterwards, we can watch aerobics videos!"
"I don't think that's going to be happening," Shadow said gently, not wanting to hurt the kawaii kitsune's feelings.
"Awww…" Tails' eyes watered.
"I MEAN," Shadow suddenly said too loudly, "of course we can!"
Tails sniffled kawaiily. "'Kay…"
Shadow looked at Tails grimly. Even if the sapphire-eyed fox was a little geeky, he WAS their guest. And guests had to be treated with respect. Besides, you never know. Tails could turn out to be an okay person. /seemingly Shails references
Shadow looked up, and out the window, his sad eyes reflecting the clear blue sky. His thoughts of Tails being a chum confirmed his dwindling sanity. He wondered how soon Sonic would get back…