Sonic Insanity
THE EGGMAN NAMING SCANDAL: I realize that Eggman's name has been specified by official sources, and that I already provided an explanation as to Eggman's name. But I thought it would have been funny, so forget it. Plus, this story IS inconsistent(ly funny, if you were to believe uhyeahitsteamdark) so don't worry.
To the line of asterisk, or D.G.O- I may use that joke, but I don't have a laser tag scene planned and it's not that great of a joke, so probably not.
Before our chapter, I'd like to present, first, a scenario involving several friends and myself.
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Mecha Scorpion and his two friends were sitting around, bored out of their skulls. It was a beautiful day outside, the friend's mom hadn't yet ordered them not to play any more video games, and she was willing to drive them anywhere. So why were they sitting in the house, bored out of their minds?
"Why don't we go to the movies?" one of the friends inquired after a long silence. "I heard Pirates of the Caribbean: Johnny Depp's Marketability vs. Computer Animated Squids is pretty good…"
"We can't go, I'm German," Mecha Scorpion sulked, putting his feet up on a stack of DVDs.
"Oh yeah…" The friends relapsed into silence. "Well, how about we watch one of these DVDs? I just got the latest Oscar-sweeping drama from Adam Sandler…"
"What are you talking about? I'm German, we can't do that," Mecha said despondently.
"Why don't you just go home if you can't do anything over here?" the other friend asked.
"I can't, I'm German," Mecha told him, shifting restlessly. "I'm just a dirty German who'll never amount to anything! God, I hate how I'm such a filthy, low-down German…"
"Why don't you guys go to the pool?" the mom said, walking by. "Oh, cause you're just a German, right, Mecha?"
Instantly both friends were trying to hold Mecha Scorpion back as he tried to lunge at the terrified mother.
"You take those German insults back!" he shrieked. "I won't stand for such racism!"
"You just insulted yourself far worse a minute ago!" the mother said, frightened.
"LIES! Treasonous, right wing propaganda! I won't stand for this prejudice and bigotry that is so rampant in America's system today!" Mecha Scorpion ranted, foaming at the German mouth. "They hate us all! They hate every last one of us! They just can't let that Hitler thing go… well, us Germans don't like him any better than you do! Would you like us to call you all Ku Klux Klan based on the actions of a few?"
"MECHA! Calm down!" hissed his friends, forcing him onto the couch with strength that would have dwarfed that of the world's strongest weight lifter. Seething, Mecha Scorpion flopped onto the couch, cracking his knuckles just by glaring at them.
"Well, here's something you can do despite your… er… Germanic heritage," one of the friends said, choosing his words carefully under the daring, furious gaze of the young author.
"What?"
"You could write your story!"
The change in the young German was extraordinary. He began to smile widely, and chuckle as the seed of madness took root in his mind. At a gesture, an obedient housekeeper trudged to a massive organ in the corner of the room and began to play ominous music. Mecha Scorpion began to rub his hands together, whispering and cackling, and flipped the light switch back and forth in a poor attempt at dramatic lighting. A light began to shine fiercely in his eyes…
"OUCH!" snarled Mecha Scorpion as the huge floodlights hit him in the eyes. Sunspots erupted in his vision and he rolled painfully on the floor, trying to regain his seared vision. The housekeeper stopped playing organ and walked away. His friends smirked as Mecha Scorpion pulled his disgruntled self into a chair, but ceased as soon as he looked at them.
"Ack… cursed 10,000 watt capacity," he grumbled, sitting upright and tapping at the computer. "Well, this'll show them… show them good… MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA-" His uncontrollable laughing stopped when he kicked the desk by mistake, causing everything on top of it to be jolted. A box of Cheese-Flavored Artichoke Hearts (everyone's favorite snack food) toppled all over him, blanketing him in a deluge of vegetable/dairy products. Furious, he began to type…
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Knuckles turned on the radio, but after his experiences with it in the Censorship chapter he didn't have much hope.
"102.9 is bringing you the hippest rap in Mobius for Popping Beats at 11, yo!" an old woman's voice rang clearly. "I'm Clara Jehosephitts, and my grandchildren listen to all the chill, ill rap beats! Like Mobb Deep and Chamillionaire… there are two DJs who really know how to par-tay!"
Disgusted, Sonic barged in and switched it to the rock station.
"Hide your women, children and womdren… women combined with children, like female kids… yeah… um… cause it's H-Man and the request drive at 3:00!" the radio blared, although the rap program had said just seconds before that it was 11. "Only on 98.2!"
"Womdren?" spat Knuckles, fire in his eyes (99 metaphorically, 1 because of a misplaced blowtorch).
"Shut up and listen," Sonic said, spraying a fire extinguisher in Knuckles' face.
"Hey, kiddos," a smooth voice chuckled, "get ready for a giddy time on the hardest rock station in… um… within 20 feet of you!"
"But their station is 3 miles across town," pointed out Knuckles.
"Shut up, Knuckles," H-Man said over the radio, as if he could have feasibly heard Knuckles' comment. "Anyway, we're playing the hardest rock for inches around! Now we have our first request… meaning the number one request… the very first one… um… yeah, we don't have one yet, can someone please call us?"
Ten minutes later, two people finally called.
"Hey, I was wondering if you could play Photograph by Nickelback," the first one asked.
"Nickelback?" bellowed Sonic. "They're not hard rock in the least!"
"Nickelback?" H-Man repeated incredulously. "Sorry, man…"
"Yeah, you tell him!" Knuckles barked.
"…But we don't play THAT heavy metal! Next thing you know, we'll be some sort of death metal station that plays Maroon 5 and The Fray! Preposterous!" H-Man hung up on that guy, while both furries convulsed with apoplexy. "Next caller, please?"
A creepy voice came on. "I understand you play the hardest rock around?"
"Yes…"
"Cause I rock the hardest plays around!" the voice said jubilantly.
Beat…
"Er… and… what exactly do you mean by that?" H-Man giggled uneasily.
"Well, it all started in the Great Baboon Famine of 34," began Mr. Creepy Dude, but Sonic had switched off the radio before the weirdness could escalate. Seeing as the story IS called Sonic Insanity, it was unclear what he was expecting, but…
"Hey, guys!" Tails said excitedly, zipping into the room. "Guess whose birthday it is tomorrow?"
"Um…" Sonic feverishly racked his brains. "Whose?"
There was a moment's silence.
"OK, Sonic, you don't have to pretend you don't know it's my B-day, that's what you do with little kids," Tails sighed.
"WHAT? It's YOUR birthday? But… oh… oh, I see! You were… um… eh… I guess we'd better plan a celebration then," Sonic muttered as Tails stalked furiously out of the room.
"Since when do we ever get older? I've been, like, 14 for as long as I can remember," Knuckles mused. "Or is it 16?"
"Enough about tutu sizes for the ballet!" Sonic ordered, inducing hilarity in absolutely nobody reading this story. "We'll have to have Shadow get him a present from all of us. You call him, you'll have better luck than I." Sonic tossed a cell phone to Knuckles, who caught it with a pair of chopsticks out of midair and started dialing with his toes…. No reason, why?
Anyway, Shadow picked up the phone. "Thanks for calling the Ultimate Lifeform, who is this?"
Knuckles adapted a suitably Eggman-esque voice and began. "Greetings, Shadow… I've got all your little friends locked up here at my base. Here are the terms for their release!"
"What do you want, Knuckles?" sighed Shadow resignedly.
Knuckles growled incoherently for fully sixty seconds before talking. "I need you to buy a present for Tails' birthday, cause we forgot about it."
"Um… Knuckles, man, I've got it on speaker and Tails is right here with me…"
"OH CRAP," gasped Knuckles.
"Nah, just kidding," Shadow laughed as Knuckles began to sputter vociferously. "So, a present from you, me and Painus Rectum Majorus…"
"HEY!" shouted Sonic.
"Yeah," Knuckles confirmed. "Get him… er… how about you get him a gift certificate for, like, Best Buy or something."
"How much should it be for, 60 dollars?" Shadow asked, doing the math quickly.
"Nah, how about 50, we can divide the cost by three much more easily," Knuckles said.
"Um… wouldn't it be easier with 60?" Shadow asked.
Knuckles thought about it for a moment, sang the last stanza of the Micronesian national anthem, then hung up. "Well, if we're going to get him such a cheap gift, then we'll have to make him something else…"
"Like what?" Sonic asked.
"Like a birthday dinner, which I will cook!" Knuckles smiled happily.
Outside, birds stopped mid-chirp. The earth halted in its spinning, causing nighttime in Tokyo to unexpectedly last 5 minutes longer than usual. Rabid pit bull terriers and genetically altered packs of wolves fled in terror. The strongest of men wept where they stood. All went silent.
"Um… I'm not sure if that's such a good idea, Knuckles," Sonic said nervously.
"Shut up!" shrieked Knuckles, banging his fist on the counter. "That fruit salad in the oven thing was a one-time deal only! And that was really Tails' problem more than mine!"
Flashback…
(AN: This flashback is an actual scene from the first chapter of the first incarnation of Sonic Insanity. It has been translated out of script format.)
"I think I'll make… fruit salad," said Tails, chopping up fruit salad. "Good! Now let's cook it for 45 minutes!" He inserted the fruit salad into the oven, where it began to blacken immediately. Sonic and Shadow shook their heads in joint disgust.
"Hmmmmm, I bet the fruit is lonely. Maybe it needs some company," Knuckles mused. He climbed into the oven with the fruit salad, shutting the door behind him.
"Knuckles, you idiot," Shadow exclaimed, "it's…"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!" Knuckles shrieked inside the oven.
"Sonic, get him out," Shadow instructed his blue look-a-like.
"You ruin everything," groused Sonic, releasing the echidna.
"Well, the guy was in an oven," pointed out Tails.
"Well, he would have made a nice table ornament," Sonic replied wistfully, as Knuckles scrubbed ashes from his fur. "It would have been a great conversation piece."
"Sonic, you're demented," Shadow told him firmly.
End flashback…
"But your cooking skills haven't improved in the slightest since then!" Sonic argued.
"SHUT UP! I trained under the Tai Shi Ba cooking master, Bum Hudson!" Knuckles shouted. "For 7 years I was taught by him on his mountain… now, when it comes to cooking, I've got no… COMPETITION!" In a Strong Bad-esque manner he jumped into the air, hovered for a moment while he flailed his arms and legs, then dropped back down.
Flashback…
Knuckles, apparently choosing to ignore the massive bags of mountain climbing gear littering his path, finally reached the top of the mountain. "I've finally done it! I've reached the home of Master Bum Hudson!"
The small area consisted of a small dojo, or training building, a sleeping quarters building, and Bum Hudson's house. Out of this last building stumbled the oddest pair of creatures Knuckles had ever seen. A lean, grizzled echidna with an eyepatch was obviously Bum Hudson, as all training instructors are clearly lean, grizzled and bearing some physical infirmity. The other creature, however, had a less certain purpose. Bum Hudson was propping himself up on a large, upside-down hippopotamus like a crutch. The beast was caterwauling and yowling like a bungee-jumping cat. It was lying on its back on top of a skateboard, moving it smoothly along as its' leaner-on stepped toward Knuckles.
"Why… what… how… HUH?" stammered Knuckles, gesticulating anxiously at the hippo.
"Well, we all need someone we can lean on," Bum Hudson shrugged unworriedly. "Just to make sense of the world, you know…"
"Yeah, that means EMOTIONALLY, not PHYSICALLY! You don't just… why, of all…" Knuckles was wrathfully trying to figure out what circumstances would drive a man to physically support himself using an inverted hippo. Unable to come up with them, he fainted dead away.
7 Years Later…
"You have come close to graduating from the Academy," Bum Hudson told Knuckles confidently. The young apprentice sat cross-legged in a karate robe, or gi. "Show me what you have learned."
Knuckles, his tongue between his teeth, blindfolded himself and reached for a box of Kool-Aid mix. His hands shaking with nerves, he removed the seal and poured it into a jug. He then poured water into the jug and stirred it.
"Very, very impressive," murmured Bum Hudson. "Now, prepare the rest."
This was the crucial moment. This was it. Knuckles pulled out a jar of cookies, placed them in the microwave, and pushed the ADD ONE MINUTE button. That minute was spent in anguished silence. Sweat poured down Knuckles' face as he glared at his blindfold, every second lasting what seemed like hours. When it was over, Knuckles removed the cookies from the microwave and put them on a plate. He handed the plate to the Sensei.
"Amazing," declared Bum Hudson. "I've never seen a student who could learn how to microwave cookies and make Kool-Aid from a mix in under 13 years of hard work. But you? A mere 7! I'm sure you could master making Kraft macaroni and cheese in under 30 years if you put your mind to it…" As he talked, Bum Hudson drank some Kool-Aid and ate a cookie. He immediately spat them out in disgust.
"DREADFUL!" he bellowed. "I've never seen a worse student! Out! Out!"
End flashback…
"So you spent 7 years learning to cook ONE THING, you fail miserably at it, and you claim to have no cooking competition!"
"Well… there is that one professional chef, who's number one in the business… but in that case, I'm his ONLY competition!" Knuckles defended.
"What number are you in the business?"
"6,498,992,894," Knuckles admitted painfully.
"That's out of a 6 and a half billon population?" Sonic smirked. "And you're his only competition? What about the people between you and him? Did they all move to Sudan or something?"
"SHUT UP!" howled Knuckles, grinding his teeth. "I'm cooking and there's nothing you can do about it!"
"Or what?" Sonic smirked.
"Or the echidna elders will put a curse on you… one MUCH WORSE than the pie curse!" Knuckles grinned.
Sonic gulped. It would be a long day.
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