Sonic Insanity
Hey, guys! I got bored and wrote another chapter. Here's the deal: my update schedule will be much less frequent, but I may still write a bit from time to time, all right? Review.
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"Hey, Shadow, what's the worst dream you've ever had?" Knuckles asked. They were seated on the couch, not watching TV or anything, which guys do all the time. In sitcoms and gay relationships, anyway.
"Why are you here?" asked Shadow K. Wellington, the noted philanthropist and opthalmophobic.
"Oops, sorry," said Knuckles, the noted imbecile and homophobic. He quickly ran back home, where Shadow was busy doing tricks on a BMX bike in the kitchen sink. Sparks flew everywhere as he did a 720 Madonna grind around the sink's room, and he accidentally cleaved the faucet off.
"Dude, does Sonic know you're doing that?" Knuckles asked as water sprayed everywhere.
"In a manner of speaking," grinned Shadow, gesturing at an irate blue hedgehog that was securely bound to the ceiling.
"Get me down from here!" shouted Margaret Donahue, noted architect and batophobic.
"Oh, sorry," said Shadow, noted moron and levophobic. "Sonic's locked in the basement. Which is a good reason not to open the basement, by the way," he added irritably as Knuckles tried to control his stupidity impulse.
"GET ME OUT OF HERE" cried a voice from behind the basement door, the pounds and thuds contributing to the din.
After releasing Margaret Donahue and declining offers of lawsuits and murder for lunch, Shadow and Knuckles seated themselves in leather armchairs.
"So, what's up?" said Shadow, wearing a silk bathrobe and sampling from (read: bathing in) a bottle of brandy.
"I was just wondering," said Knuckles, clad in a smoking jacket and puffing contemplatively at a pipe, "what your worst dream was."
"Oh, I know!" said Shadow. "I remember it like it was twenty days, thirteen hours, forty-eight minutes, twelve seconds, and eighty-three milliseconds ago."
"How oddly specific," grumbled Knuckles. "It's almost as if that was the real time and not some sort of insanely accurate approximation."
"Are you kidding? That's just a basic estimation," cuckolded Shadow, glaring fiercely at the furious red echidna. "Anyway, time for a bash flack!"
"That sounds like some sort of Ben Affleck hating ceremony," mused Knuckles as the flashback began.
Shadow put on his nightwear- a glove with a tiny blue dot on the finger instead of no dot at all. This signified a massive overhaul in personal appearance. Depositing his Chaos Emerald into a small safe that he securely locked, Shadow jumped high into the air and onto the bed, preparing to relax after a long day.
"Oh, you had a bad day, you something and something else, easy listening sucks and I did faker's mom," he crooned in a girlish falsetto. "You kick up the leaves and then somethiHOLYAGJAGIJAFAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"
As he hurtled downward toward his bed, the mattress groaned ravenously and sprouted two evil glimmering eyes and a monstrous fanged maw. A cottony tongue slurped hungrily and engulfed Shadow, drawing him into its toothy embrace.
"All my life I've been bounced on, see how YOU like it!" boomed the bed, holding Shadow firmly in its teeth and performing repeated pile drivers.
"THIS IS ABSURD! INSANE! RIDICULOUS! OUTRAGEOUS! INANE!" cried Shadow, fighting tooth and nail to escape the clutches of his living mattress.
"You used the same word twice there, laddie!" roared the bed, who apparently had a bad grasp on consonants. Shadow took advantage of its distraction to apply a choke to it, but the mattress broke free. The room transmuted into a karate dojo, and both combatants bowed deeply before attacking.
The bed lunged forward with a spinning hook kick, which Shadow ducked under before pulling out a katana and slashing away. Feathers littered the ground, but the bed rallied despite its wounds, blocked Shadow's strike with a spear, and dived right at him. Shadow lunged forward, dodged, and impaled the mattress on his sword.
"And now," murmured the mattress, gasping and cloudy-eyed, "for the last adventure any of us will ever face…"
"Death?" Shadow asked sympathetically.
"What did you expect, moron, McDonalds food?" snarled the mattress before dying.
"What's the difference," shrugged Shadow, wiping his blade on the mattress. "You were nice sleeping on, old friend. I'm sorry you turned on me. But I've got a new mattress now, one that I like to call… SONIC'S MOTHER!" On that dramatic note, he dashed away, fell flat on his face, and then woke up.
"And that's where I woke up," Shadow said redundantly.
"I've got one better," said Knuckles, a new flashback beginning. "Or a lot worse, really…"
Knuckles was reading a recipe from a… wait for it… recipe book. (Hilarious, eh?) "OK, three cups of minced cheese leaves, twelve ounces of cream of pepperoni…" He poured these disgusting, hopefully fictional ingredients into a massive sieve. "Oh, and extra-virgin olive oil!" He began to giggle uproariously. "Extra-virgin, get it? I'm so naughty…" Giving himself little reproving slaps on the shoulder, thighs and stomach, Knuckles pranced over to the cabinet and opened it.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" he yelled at the two bottles of olive oil "cuddling" on a bed. The bed looked distinctly uncomfortable (and similar to the one Shadow had slain).
"Come on, man, I'm twenty-five years old! You wouldn't expect me to still be a virgin!" complained one bottle, sitting up and revealing far too much. His companion giggled girlishly and pulled him back down.
"But you're supposed to be EXTRA virgin!" howled Knuckles, scar tissue forming on his eyeballs from the horrific sight of olive oil copulation.
"No, I'm just regular virgin… well, at least I used to be," amended the bottle of olive oil. "Extra-virgin's over there."
Another bottle of olive oil sat in the corner, rocking feverishly back and forth while somehow being unshaven. "Eye on what I'm after… don't…" He hacked into a stained handkerchief, shivering while watching a hot olive oil girl bottle walk by. (Believe me, I never thought I would write that sentence in my life.) "Take just what I… cough! Came for… then I'm out the door again…"
"This is exceedingly uncomfortable," proclaimed the bed in an upper-class tone.
"You're a guy, right? And you're a girl?" said Knuckles suspiciously.
"No… WE'RE BOTH MEN! MUAHAHAHAHA!" cackled the olive oil bottles. The bed fainted.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" cried the acutely homophobic Knuckles.
"Just kidding, she's a girl," said another woman olive oil bottle, appearing from under the sheets.
Just as Knuckles was going to enter a severe ethical debate on whether lesbian sex was attractive when the participants were two bottles of olive oil, he woke up.
"Yeah, that sounds like a pretty bad dream," Shadow admitted. "So, it's about lunchtime, what should we eat?"
"Let's find a good restaurant," Knuckles said. "And let's bring Tails."
"Why? Tails is terrible at everything," Shadow argued.
"People will think it's just lunch with the guys instead of a lunch date," Knuckles explained, making a face.
"People will think that…" Shadow whispered mischievously.
"WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?"
"OMG, Knux, I wuz jk, alrite?" IM-talked Shadow, giggling childishly.
"Where is the falsetto-voiced wonder, anyway?" Knuckles joked, still giving Shadow the evil eye.
"He's with a therapist," Shadow said. "So you'd better not make fun of him about anything when we see him, or it'll be you footing the bill for his next session."
This last statement was lost on Knuckles. As far as he was concerned, "footing the bill" meant backing up the Bills football team through donations of pizza and girls. "A therapist? What for?"
"He's growing up in a rather dysfunctional household, if you had not noticed," Shadow replied snidely.
"Are you kidding? I'm the most normal person I've ever met!" objected Knuckles, pausing to gnaw thoughtfully at the coffee table. "Do we need to pick him up, or did he drive himself?"
"Yeah, see, that's the thing, he's not allowed to drive until he gets it all worked out with the shrink," Shadow explained.
At the therapist's office…
"You see, Doc," said Tails, "as a child, I never quite got the privileges that I really deserved. I wasn't allowed to have an iPod until I was 18, because my parents were worried about "that awful music on the radio." You can understand the problem, don't you?"
"Yes, although you're still 6 years old," muttered the shrink, folding his notepaper into paper airplanes and flying them around the room.
"Overall, I felt ignored and overwhelmed. Nobody ever really noticed me or cared about me. I felt like a statistic, or a fact, another mouth to feed, another birthday to remember. So I strove to excel in machinery and technology," Tails explained.
"This is really boring," commented the therapist. "Get to the good part, please."
Tails fired the shrink a deathly glare, but he was too busy making little sound effects as he drew a stick figure battle scene on his notebook paper to notice. Sighing, the foxboy went on. "I took classes in applied sciences, quantum physics, nuclear physics and basic design principles. Within a month, at the tender age of four weeks, I had created a-"
"Boooooooooooring," yawned the therapist.
"-jet engine that could exceed the speed of light while compensating for jet lag through an applied osmosis to restore chronological equilibrium," glared Tails.
"I can't hear you! Lalalalalalala! Look at me, I'm not listening!" The therapist got out of his seat and started prancing around like an imbecile, sticking his thumbs in his ears and waggling his fingers.
"I'm paying you to listen to me!" screamed Tails, standing up furiously. "Would it inconvenience you too much to provide the service you're legally bound to give me?"
"Na nyaaaah na boo-boo, I hate you!" squealed the therapist, hiding behind his chair. "You can't seeeeeeeeee me!"
Enraged beyond all belief, Tails pulled out a gun and shot so close to the shrink that it left a small burn mark on his face.
Which was right to the side of the ENORMOUS GUNSHOT WOUND in the middle of the therapist's face.
"Er, ah, um, wah," sputtered Tails nervously as the therapist winked at him and died. He walked casually out of the office and into the parking lot.
"Way to go, Tails, you killed the therapist," Knuckles said, as if he had any plausible way of knowing that.
"Knuckles, why are you talking to Tails? We're not even anywhere near him yet," said Shadow confusedly. They were still driving to the shrink's office and they were ten miles away.
"Well, you see," explained Knuckles, "I-"
But before he could make up a ridiculous explanation for how he had known that the therapist was dead and that Tails had killed him, a giant moose with wild eyes darted across the street with remarkable agility and came straight at them.
Perhaps it was the fact that the moose was moving a bit stiffly at the joints. Perhaps it was the giant antigravity machine that enabled the moose to hover. Whatever the reason, Shadow knew something was up, so he gripped the steering wheel tight and floored the accelerator.
"OW!" screamed Knuckles as Shadow stamped on his foot- Knuckles had been driving the car. With many a scornful glance, Shadow threw Knuckles out of the car and drove faster. It looked as if the robotic moose and the car would have a 5,000-mile-per-hour collision all over the interstate. It was then that Shadow wondered if he had been thinking clearly when he initiated this game of chicken.
"Of COURSE!" Shadow exclaimed, a stroke of genius overcoming him. After he had recovered from his stroke, Shadow pressed the OPEN TRUNK button. A giant brick wall that they had been keeping inside the trunk for just such an occasion fell out, landing upright in the middle of the road. Shadow's car somehow sprouted wings and flew out of the deranged mecha-moose's path. And not just typical metal airplane wings. No, it grew three feathery appendages that beat frantically to overcome the efforts of a deformed bat wing that seemed intent on flying back into the moose.
The moose, meanwhile, plowed into the brick wall and exploded. Cars tumbled in all directions and the shockwave decimated buildings miles away, but the brick wall was somehow still standing.
"Ha hah ha… you thought you could beat me!" boomed Eggman.
Shadow, enraged, looked at the moose. Its remnants were strewn all over the highway. There was no way Eggman could have survived that. Then where was he?
Suddenly, the brick wall exploded and out came Eggman, chortling wickedly. The sight of Eggman actually standing and moving of his own volition caused Shadow to have another stroke, from which he recovered with extraordinary speed. Then he fainted, because Eggman hadn't even been standing. Instead, the evil genius had somehow shoved his immense body into a baby carriage, inside of which he sat like the most repugnant infant ever.
"What are you doing?" screamed Knuckles, crawling out from under a tidal wave that had spontaneously appeared on the street.
"Goo goo ga ga!" protested Eggman, trying to appear innocent by sucking on his thumb and widening his eyes until it was likely that it would take him a few seconds to blink.
"Oh, SHUT UP!" screeched Shadow, massively enraged at this inconvenience. "You can't just avoid being captured by acting like an innocent child!"
"Why not?" challenged Eggman, adjusting his frilly bonnet in such a way that it made him look even more revolting. "Count Olaf acted like a pregnant woman in the thirteenth Series of Unfortunate Events book-"
"Which was the most anticlimactic end to any series in the entire world," said Shadow with disgust, obviously not channeling the author's personal opinion in any way, shape or form.
"So why can't I act like a baby?" inquired Eggman, sucking from a baby bottle between complaints. This would have appeared more innocent and infantile if the bottle was not emblazoned with the label SLIPPERY JAKE'S GRADE-J TEQUILA- AVAILABLE AT THE DOLLAR STORE, which was scarcely hidden under a hastily applied paper bag.
Shadow and Knuckles looked at each other. "You know, confining yourself in such a tiny baby carriage might make it hard for you to escape if anyone were to suspect you- you know, like two highly reliable heroes like us."
"Yeah, I know, but what are the chances of that happening?" Eggman asked obliviously, now with two ladies on each arm.
"Much lower than the odds of you being mistaken for a toddler," said Shadow with profound disgust.
"Nonsense!" snarled Eggman around a cigar. "Stroller, fly!" Suddenly the stroller sprouted three helicopter propellers, the blades of which immediately hit each other and exploded. There was a very awkward silence after this, and the ladies looked unimpressed and began to disperse.
"Wow," uttered Shadow eloquently, totally amazed by Eggman's lack of foresight.
"SHUT UP!" said Eggman, ingesting two grams of aspartame from a plastic bag for solace, much to Shadow's shock and Knuckles' envy. "I'll get out of here irregardless of the consequences!"
Suddenly Shadow turned into Grammar Shadow, who only appears in the face of such horrible grammar as what Eggman had just utilized. He picked up a propane fuel burner and chucked it at the stroller.
Just then, Eggman's baby bonnet expanded into a hot air balloon, and the propane burner caused him to raise into the air. This was the first time that such an easy setup for an explosion had been rejected in the story.
"You idiot!" shrieked Knuckles. "Now he'll get away!"
"Not for long, laddie!" shouted Shadow, as if Eggman would have ever actually gotten away from them if they were to get him back again in such a short period of time. Wait, had any period of time been specified? Never mind. Shadow beckoned and his car, which had sprouted two fox tails in addition to the bird wings and the bat wing, came down out of the sky.
"Hop in!" shouted Tails, who was at the wheel. Apparently the driving controls controlled the wings, despite the fact that the car was no longer relying on the power of the motor to run. Shadow and Knuckles got in, not asking how Tails had gotten control of their car or how his tails were outside of the car while he was inside, and they flew off to engage in intense aerial combat with the stroller balloon.
"How did you get away from the therapist?" asked Knuckles suspiciously.
"Er… let's just say he met the same end as my last therapist," Tails confessed.
Flashback…
Shadow had watched Super Size Me and, in a fit of paranoid lunacy, sent Tails to a rehab clinic to be made more thin, despite Tails' diet of rice and salad that he had eaten since he was three. Now Tails sat in a classroom with eight immensely overweight children and an anorexic Russian spy who was taking notes on everything while justifying her presence by saying she was fat. Apparently she thought that the presence of so many fat children at once could only mean an imminent nuclear attack. The only reason she hadn't been kicked out of the class was because the fat kids were occupying too much space for her to get out.
Tails sighed, being the only person in the classroom who was neither Russian, overweight or totally insane. The instructor, who was fatter than any three of the overweight boys put together, was not doing anything to help them. In fact, he was running his hands over his own body while barking about how he wasn't at all overweight.
"See, the problem with me teaching this class," the instructor commented around his massive walrus mustache, "is I've never been fat enough to know what it's like. Look at me! I'm a fine, slim figure of a man… just like you, my little lotus blossom." He winked fondly at the Russian spy.
"Um, I'm a woman," she lied, forcing her voice into a high falsetto.
"Oh… in that case, I meant you, Jeffrey," the fat instructor continued without breaking stride, grinning obscenely at a terrified fat child toward the back of the room. "Now, what was I saying? Oh, yes. Just look at me, with my slender, muscular build and flat, supermodel stomach!" He patted his own massive belly.
"The problem here is," he continued, "Is I can't understand your predicament! Come on, FATTIES, tell me how you feel! What's it like to be FAT? Yuk yuk yuk!" He chortled deeply, and Tails began to feel as if something was wrong. "What's it like to have that latticework of fat cells coating your frail frames in a magnificent excess of glucose and carbohydrates? Does it tickle your funny bone to know you're encased in such a soft… frankly, delectable… padding of fat particles?"
"Your mom was encased in padding… and that was before we took her to the mental hospital," smirked Tails.
"What's your favorite band?" asked the instructor unexpectedly, instead of getting mad.
"Um… Guns and Roses, how about you?" Tails asked.
This really threw the instructor for a loop. He had apparently been trying to set up a your-mom joke, but it hadn't worked. "My favorite band is… OK, six minus eight, carry the one… oh yeah, I know! The Lobster Tail!"
"That's not a real band," Tails objected.
"Oh yeah, I forgot," sneered Instructor Jeremy.
"How do you just FORGET that your favorite band is totally made up and doesn't even EXIST?" shrieked Tails.
Just then, the flashback ended, and they were back in the flying car. Eggman had shot a missile at them, and Tails had been distracted.
"Get ready for some fast driving! HOLD ON!" screamed Knuckles, although he hadn't even been driving. Shadow fired him a strange look, launching a few missiles at Eggman.
Just then Sonic, who was still mad about being locked in the basement, somehow jumped into the car and knocked the stuffing out of Shadow. The car tumbled to the ground, and Eggman smirked at his tremendous skill in combat before flying away.
"I wonder if the car will run out of gas again," muttered Tails as Sonic and Shadow somehow fought inside the falling car.
"No… gas prices will go up, and since we won't have enough money to afford the gas in our tank, it will be taken out by federal agents!" screamed the band The Lobster Tail, who was falling down next to them while playing a 6-minute guitar solo.
"I told you so!" cackled Instructor Jeremy, who was tumbling next to them while looking even fatter than before. Apparently he had eaten all the other students in the class. "I told you they were a band, but you wouldn't listen!" Tails, getting an idea, pulled everyone out of the car and used Instructor Jeremy as a large fat cushion to break their fall.
"OK, so that was a ridiculously action-packed chapter," said Tails, ducking as The Lobster Tail's lead singer fell with a shriek.
"How did you avoid that by ducking? You weren't moving any part of your body any further away from that guy," Sonic growled.
"Um… lamp tea physics," explained Tails. They drove the car back home, which was not harmed in the least (so they didn't really need to use Jeremy at all) and sat down.
"So what should we do now?" Sonic asked.
"Well, this chapter is plenty long. Let's get back together for a Halloween chapter," Knuckles suggested.
"Um… maybe not," Shadow muttered. "I don't really like to publicize our celebrations together… maybe we should just stop, you know?"
"Your mom and I don't like to publicize our celebrations together, but we certainly didn't stop," snickered Knuckles, who was immediately hit in the face by a fistful of Shadow fist. However that worked.
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So, maybe there will be a Halloween issue, and maybe not. Either way, review!