Chapter #7: Eight Heroes, One House
Tom Nook led the gang of heroes over a bridge to a clearing in the forest, and they saw a massive mansion surrounded by a white picket fence and some apple trees. They stared gawk-eyed while the raccoon dug into his pockets for the keys to the house.
"So this is where all of us will be staying?" Spike asked.
"Indeed it is," Nook replied. "Normally the houses I build aren't this size from the start, but a group of humans moved in and paid me enough money to remodel it into a mansion. They were quite the faithful workers…sadly, they aren't here now; they left after Big Boss came too close to AnimaCity." He finally found the keys and unlocked the gate. But just then he realized something. "Oh dear…"
"What's the problem, Nookmeister?" Sonic said.
"I just remembered something: only four humans lived here. Your number is twice that, and that could be a bit of a problem. It could get very cramped in the attic that they used as a bedroom."
Ratchet shrugged (a bad habit of his) and said, "Hey, I'm used to cramped quarters; the sleeping cubicles on the Starship Phoenix are much smaller than this. I think we can cope with it by sleeping in other rooms."
Sonic nodded. "I don't see a problem with that idea."
"Sounds good to me," Spike put in.
Tom looked at SpongeBob, who pointed at the others and replied, "What they said."
Clank, who had been scanning the house, turned to Nook and said, "I presume that while we inhabit this structure, we must lie low and not agitate the existing law enforcement."
The coon was confused by Clank's choice of words. "Huh?"
Tails quickly stepped in. "He meant that we shouldn't show ourselves to any robots and cause trouble."
Ratchet stared at the fox in amazement. "You can understand him?! Half the time he talks, I have to look in a dictionary to understand what he said!"
Tom Nook, who was quite happy that the heroes were fine with the slightly cramped arrangement, clapped his hands together and said, "All right then! Go ahead and make yourselves at home! I suggest you clean out the house and bed down for the night." He looked at his watch. "I need to get back to my store. Don't be afraid to visit if you need anything! I'll send someone to bring you to my shop tomorrow morning at around 7:15, so be ready! Good night!" With that farewell, he walked away in the direction of Nookington's.
There was a bit of silence, and then SpongeBob exclaimed, "Let's check out the house!" Before anyone could stop him, he opened the door and ran inside. Seconds later, they heard a high-pitched scream. A terrified SpongeBob raced out the door and leaped into Sonic's arms. "Don't go in there!" he yelled while pointing at the house. "The humans who lived there were monsters!"
Ratchet rolled his eyes and muttered, "Oh brother."
Patrick, for some strange reason, asked an intelligent question. "What's so scary about a house, SpongeBob?" Ignoring his buddy's warnings, he stepped into the house. He also screamed and leaped into Sonic's arms. The combined weight of the two sea creatures knocked the hedgehog down.
"All right! Enough already! Get off of me!" Sonic managed to shout from under the "dog-pile".
Spike and Ratchet quickly came to the rescue and picked up SpongeBob and Patrick, and Sonic got to his feet. Spike put down SpongeBob and said, "Let's see what these two loons are so scared about!" and walked through the doorway into the house. Instead of a scream, they heard a low whistle and "It's OK, guys. Come on in!"
The rest of the gang, including SpongeBob and Patrick, went inside. Once they were inside and looked around, they finally understood what the two sea creatures had been scared of. The humans that had lived there had loved to go fishing.
"Fish aquariums?!" Ratchet said.
Patrick resumed being stupid. "What are fish aquariums?"
SpongeBob stared at a sea bass in a saltwater tank. "What a poor, innocent creature…" he whimpered. Many of them rolled their eyes, and Ratchet glared at SpongeBob and Patrick, growling and muttering to himself.
After much discussion, the heroes decided to use four rooms as bedrooms, to leave the main living room alone, and to use the second-floor room as storage space for the humans' useless furniture. The four chosen bedrooms were the three small rooms on the first floor and the attic, which the humans had used as a bedroom before. It took the gang until sundown to clean up their rooms and carry the useless stuff up into the second floor. But then, as they rested in the living room, they realized they had a problem: what were they going to sleep on? They hadn't seen any beds in the house at all; what had happened to them?
"If only we had some sleeping bags…" Spike mumbled.
"There's gotta be some beds around here somewhere!" Sonic said. "I'll go upstairs and look in the wardrobes. There's a phone up in the attic, too, so we can call Nook; he gave me his cell phone number on the way to the house."
As Sonic went upstairs to look for some beds, Ratchet searched in the wardrobes in the other rooms. A minute later, the Lombax triumphantly returned with leaf-shaped items in his arms. "Hey, guys! I found some beds!"
Jimmy happily leaped up from his seat on a ranch couch. "All right Ratchet! Not bad for an alien!"
"Uhhh…thanks, I guess…"
Tails took some of the beds and counted them. "Uh oh. There are only four beds!"
Clank piped up, "I have no need for one; therefore, we are missing three more sleeping units."
Spike and Ratchet looked at each other and smiled mischievously. "Looks like some of us aren't goin' to sleep comfortably tonight," said the Lombax, "and it's not going to be me."
Spike's fists were up in an instant. "I'll fight you for it!"
"Please, guys! Don't fight!" pleaded Tails.
Clank added, "This act of violence is not necessary."
SpongeBob soon joined the argument over the beds. "I want a bed! I don't wanna sleep on the floor! It's cold!"
Of course, Patrick had to be the doofus he is. "What's a floor?"
Spike turned and said, "Oh shut up, you moron! You can sleep on the floor!"
"I'm not a moron!" retorted Patrick.
"Prove it to me! What's 1+1?"
"That's easy! It's 6!"
Spike, Jimmy, Ratchet, and Tails slapped their foreheads, and SpongeBob said, "Gee, even I didn't know that."
Jimmy stared at the sponge. "Aw, come on! Even preschoolers know that's wrong! Your friend is dumber than he looks!"
This remark offended the sponge. "Nobody insults my best friend!" In an instant he had equipped his karate gear. "Take this!" he cried, and rushed forward to attack Jimmy. Spike rushed in to defend his cousin, and soon the trio was fighting in the midst of a cloud of dust. Tails and Clank backed off, shouting and trying to tell them to stop.
At the same time, Patrick stared at Ratchet with a goofy look on his face. Finally Ratchet snapped, "What are you lookin' at?"
"I don't speak Spanish," replied the starfish.
"I'm not speakin' Spanish!"
"Gesundheit."
"Idiot!"
Patrick grinned. "Thank you!"
Spike stopped fighting for a moment to stare at Patrick. "Yup, he's retarded," he remarked.
"He is not retarded!" shouted SpongeBob, who pounced on Spike in retaliation.
Clank climbed onto a blue clock and called down to the fighting trio, "You are all being childish. We do not have to quarrel about this predicament! We can find a solution!"
"Let me go get Sonic and see what he says!" suggested Tails.
"Who's Sonic?" said Patrick.
This caused Ratchet to lose his temper with the starfish, and he dove at him, shouting, "Shut up, you ding-dong!"
In seconds, everyone but Tails and Clank were wrestling in the middle of the room, creating a cloud of dust. Fists, Stun Clubs, and Ratchet's Omniwrench flew all over the place. Battle cries…and shouts of pain…filled the air.
"Take that!!"
"Ouch! That's my eye!"
"Take this!!"
"Hiiiyaaaa!!"
"Ow! My stomach!"
Up until then, Patrick hadn't really been fighting, just rolling around and laughing his socks off. But when someone shouted, "Who stomped on my hand?!", that changed everything. He perked up and said, "Stomping?! I wanna start stomping!" The crazy starfish lunged at Ratchet and grabbed his tail.
"Hey! What are you doing?!" Ratchet protested.
Then Patrick did the one thing you should never do to a Lombax: he stomped on his tail!
"Aaaaaarrgghh!!" Ratchet screamed as his tail was crushed. Then pain suddenly turned into rage, and Ratchet turned to Patrick with furious eyes and yelled,"Patrick, you're goin' down!!"
The starfish's eyes widened at the sight of the angry Lombax, and he said, "Should I start screaming now?"
Ratchet grabbed Patrick by the throat and began strangling him. From the safety of his seat on the ranch couch, Tails tried to persuade him to calm down, but nothing he said helped. Suddenly, the lights went out, and everyone was enveloped in darkness. The fighting finally ceased, but it was replaced with confused shouts.
"Hey, what happened?!" cried Jimmy.
Ratchet let go of Patrick and called out, "Where is everybody?"
Somewhere in the darkness, they heard SpongeBob sucking his thumb. "It's dark!" he whimpered. "I'm scared of the dark!"
Clank tried to explain the sudden lack of light. "A light bulb probably burned out, friends. There is no need to be frightened."
"Yeah right!" Spike butted in. "Somebody turned out the lights, is what happened!"
"What are lights?" said a dumb voice.
Spike turned to the person to his left and said, "Shut up, Patrick!"
"I'm not Patrick! I'm Jimmy!" yelled the person. "Patrick's next to me!"
"Sorry, I don't know Portuguese," said Patrick.
"I'm speakin' English, you moron!" Spike barked back.
"I'd love some roast beef!"
"Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!!"
This time Ratchet spoke up. "So who turned out the lights?!"
All of them jumped when they heard the stairs creak. A familiar voice spoke. "I turned 'em off."
SpongeBob gasped. "Who's that?!"
Ratchet, who was sitting next to SpongeBob, slapped him. "It's just Sonic, you goofball!"
The lights came back on, and there stood Sonic, with his index finger on the light switch. "We're supposed to lie low, remember? Fighting is only gonna draw attention to us."
Patrick put on a goofy grin and said, "So we can't turn off the lights?"
The hedgehog smacked his forehead. "No. As long as we live here, we can't fight and cause a ruckus. Agreed?"
The group (minus Patrick) nodded and said, "Agreed."
And Patrick just said with a doofus grin, "Alpacas."
Jimmy raised his hand like a student in class. "What about the beds? What are we gonna do with them?"
Sonic replied, "I saw some bathtubs in the attic. Don't SpongeBob and Patrick need water?"
Said sponge yelped, "Hey, yeah, you're right! I was beginning to feel dry! We'll use those tubs!"
"But that leaves one more required sleeping unit," Clank pointed out.
"That's easy: I won't sleep on a bed," Sonic replied. "I'll sleep on the roof." Everyone but Tails (who was used to this habit) stared at him in puzzlement. "Don't worry, I'll be fine up there. Poke your head out the window of ya need me."
Sonic walked back up the stairs and climbed out the window onto the roof. With that problem solved, the others got the beds and put two in each room. SpongeBob and Patrick went into the attic, filled up the tubs, and fell asleep while rejuvenating their water-dependent bodies. Spike and Jimmy slept in the study, Tails placed his bed in the one that had previously been the game room, and Ratchet and Clank lay down in the guestroom. They all fell asleep as soon as their heads hit their pillows.
