"When Worlds Collide

Chapter 6

The Showdown, Part 1

Author's Note: A two-part chapter? It can't be! Yes, it is. DUN DUN DUN suspense! Also, my profile page has a poll now. Check it out, and vote if you care about it at all.

Lumpy, the store manager, was very confused. "She's been on break for almost an hour now! Where is she? Hey, Nutty, don't eat the merchandise!" Nutty, with his insatiable sweet tooth we all know and love, had wandered into the candy aisle, and was currently trying to rip open a pack of jelly beans with his teeth. Lumpy immediately ran over and pulled the bag out of his hands. "Damn it, Nutty! That's the third time this week! What's wrong with you!"

"Aw, jeez, I'm sorry, boss."

"Sorry doesn't cut it! You're fired!"

Then, Rufus and Taily burst in through the door. "Lumpy!" They cried in unison.

"Huh?" Lumpy turned around, and saw Rufus and Taily panting violently. "Oh, there you are! Where the hell were you?"

Both Taily and Rufus started talking at the same time, yelling so loud Lumpy couldn't make out what either of them were saying. He was rapidly moving his head back and forth, trying to figure out what they were blabbering about. "Wait, wait, wait!" Lumpy yelled. Rufus and Taily stopped talking. "Now, Taily, I want you to calmly tell me what happened!"

"Okay." She took a deep breath, and started talking. "I went on break to practice my fire breathing, but these two guys hit me with a tranquilizer dart or something and took me to a base in the middle of the forest where the hospital doesn't work, and this general guy said he wanted me to join his army or something, and he whistled and I guess he told me to kill Rufus, who broke in by blowing up the front gate, and then he whistled when I found him, and then we ran back here."

"Uh…Run that by me one time?"

"Oh, forget it."

The general, in the meantime, was just getting to the outskirts of the town, where Handy was working on a sign. The Tiger General walked over, and asked, "Where is Taily?"

"Huh? I dunno. Who the hell are…" before Handy could react, the general grabbed Handy's neck in his metallic hand and suspended him several feet in the air. "I'll ask once again, and only once. Where is Taily?"

"Uh…uh…I think she works at the grocery store!"

"Thank you." The Tiger General threw him into the sign, breaking it in half. He broke off in a run towards the grocery store.

A few seconds later, Handy got up and saw the remains of the sign. "Oh, God damn it!" He yelled, before doing the famous aside glance.

Taily, oblivious to this, had gone back to the cash register, and was currently checking out Flippy's groceries. Oh, this ought to be fun.

"Okay, Flippy, that comes out to…hold on… damn it, the register's broken. Hold on a second, I'll get the manager." She left, leaving Flippy completely alone at the checkout line. It was a slow day, you see. Flippy started whistling to himself when Taily was out of earshot. He saw something out of the corner of his eye, and stopped. He almost recognized the person coming in the door, but before he could react, the man saw him. "You!" He cried.

"W-what? No. No! I killed you!"

"Or so you thought," retorted the general. "My loyal soldiers found the crushed remains of my body, and…rebuilt me, so to speak. To demonstrate, I'll allow you to punch me."

Flippy took a deep breath, and curled his fist. He ran towards the general, began screaming, threw out his hand…and heard a hard metallic clang. Pain shot up his arm, and he began yelling.

"You see, I don't just have these metal claws any more. I'm a cyborg now, Flippy. I'm unstoppable. I have a variety of nifty little weapons. Want to see?"

Flippy most certainly did not, so he started to run away. It was too late, though. The general raised his hand, and a thick wire shot out from it. It hit Flippy, and in an instant, thousands of volts of electricity coursed through his body. "You really are pathetic like this. That wasn't a challenge at all!" The general sneered.

Earlier

Taily was walking with Lumpy to her register, wanting to see if he could fix it.

"It's the strangest thing," she said. "It was working normally, but then it just stopped."

"Well, I'll take a look at it…Huh?" Both of them stopped dead in their tracks when they saw the Tiger General standing over Flippy's body. "That wasn't a challenge at all!" He said. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the two people standing there. "Taily, hello!" He whistled quickly. "Kill them both and follow me." Taily began changing into her murderous form. Her claws came out, her eyes went bloodshot, blah, blah, blah, we've all seen it before. In an instant, she leaped up into the air and slashed out Lumpy's throat. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Flippy's head was reeling, a blend of flashbacks ranging from all the way from the war, to just a few days ago. Thousands of images of death, pain, and destruction flashed by in seconds. His teeth clenched, as more and more hideous things passed through his mind. He tried to resist his evil side, but he opened his eyes and saw Lumpy's bloodied corpse. That pushed him over the line, and he embraced his dark side more than he ever had before. He slowly got to his feet, pulling out his knife, and ran at Taily, arm raised. She turned around, and ducked just before he would have slashed her open. Quicker than he could see, she spun around and delivered a roundhouse kick to his face. He stumbled backwards, directly into his groceries from earlier. A pineapple fell into his lap, and he got an idea. He grabbed the stem and threw it at her, but she retaliated by breathing fire at it and turning it to ash. Quickly, Flippy got to his feet.

Taily continued to breathe fire, causing a massive conflagration (Yay for big words) surrounding both of them. Since Taily was a fire type, it obviously didn't affect her. It did activate the fire alarms, though, and the signal was sent to the fire department.

"Hark!" Splendid's alter ego yelled. "A cry for help! This looks like a job for…" He quickly ran into a laughably convenient phone booth, pulling off his tie and glasses. He ran back out and yelled, "Splendid! Purveyor of justice! Savior of freedom!"

"Oh, hey, Chris." Cuddles said, after watching this whole thing.

"Gah! Cuddles! Shhh! Don't tell anybody of my secret identity! The consequences could be disastrous!"

"Dude, we all know it's you."

"What? Really?"

"Yeah. You're the only blue flying squirrel here."

"Oh. Well…there's a fire at the grocery store. Uh…bye, I guess."

"Bye."

Splendid flew off; flamboyant horn music blaring in the background. Even though this is a work of writing, …just imagine the Superman theme song or something.

"Well, that was awkward." Said Cuddles.

"Hm. How could I put out this fire?" Splendid asked himself while flying over the grocery store. Several fire trucks were already there, but one of them had a kink in the hose that was causing it to balloon. The Mole connected one of the hoses to a lamppost, and Petunia was busy cleaning off the sidewalk instead of putting out the fire.

"That's it! My ice breath!" Splendid narrated. He took a deep breath, and then breathed out pure cold. The flames resisted, but he started breathing even harder, and the flames diminished, turning into a giant block of ice. "Ha ha! No challenge is too great for the mighty Splendid!"

"Who are you talking to?" Yelled Petunia.

"Oh!" Splendid blushed. "Uh…nobody."

"Weirdo." She turned back around and continued washing off the sidewalk.

"I need to stop talking to myself like that. Hello!" With his super vision, Splendid had just caught sight of Taily and Flippy's frozen bodies, locked in battle. "Oh, crap!" He began using his laser vision to melt the ice, but when he stopped, he saw he accidentally melted Taily and Flippy as well. "Whoa!" He flew off as fast as he could; hoping nobody would notice that.

"Huh?" Taily awoke from the bed with a jolt. "What? Huh? What happened? Hey! Doctor!" Nobody came. "Hello?" She got out of bed and walked to the door. Looking in the hall, she saw nobody. She could hear screaming outside now, so she ran over to a window and nearly fainted when she saw what was happening. The Tiger General was shooting a gun everywhere, that looked like it was attached to his arm, yelling, "Where is Taily? WHERE IS SHE?" He continued yelling, even as the police were shooting him. The bullets didn't seem to have any effect whatsoever.

"W-what?" Taily questioned. A bullet whizzed through the window she was standing in, nearly hitting her in the forehead. A small shard of glass landed in her eye, making her scream extremely loud. The Tiger General glanced up, and saw her flailing about inside the hospital. Not wasting an opportunity, he immediately ran inside, charging up his taser gun.

To Be Continued… DUN DUN DUNNNNN

Oh dear, a cliffhanger. How will this episode end? Will the Tiger General prevail? Will I ever stop asking superfluous (Yay for more big words!) questions? Find out next time, on When Worlds Collide, the critically acclaimed (Ha) highly popular (Ha) masterpiece (I can't type these lies with a straight face, seriously.)

Until then, enjoy this fake interview with myself:

Q: When did you first come up with the idea for this story?

A: Well, I had often amused myself with the idea of "What would happen if a Pokemon ended up in the Happy Tree Friends universe?" and eventually, it evolved (No pun intended) into this story. I had actually come up with ideas for Floatzel, Absol, and quite a few others, but eventually I settled on just Ninetales.

Q: Why?

A: Personal preference. I just liked the idea of a Happy Tree Friend that happened to have nine tails. Thus, Taily was born.

Q: Where did you get some of your ideas for characters?

A: Brent Pinser was mostly based on bits and pieces of various bad guys I had already seen in fiction, and Taily just came out of nowhere, pretty much. I got Britty because I wanted a character that dressed like that, and I just thought "British Stereotype". Frenchy came about because I wanted a foil for Britty, and I wanted Rufus for a type of character the show didn't have yet: A loser that tries to make himself look cool, and fails badly in most of his attempts.

Q: Looking back on your earlier works, is there anything you would have done differently?

A: Oh, hell yes. So much, in fact, I'll be remaking them in the near future, in a manner that doesn't suck.

Q: Well, those are all of the question I have for now, so bye!

A: Awkward Vulpix, over and out.