Sonic Insanity
Here's the Halloween special, people, a bit early R-v-w.
To playstation14- I'm working on it, just not as fast as I once did.
To Ann Coulter- love your work.
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"I say," declared Shadow, standing up in front of an unimpressed Tails, Sonic and Knuckles, who were all sitting outside at their picnic table eating lunch, "that there is nothing mystical, spiritual, demonic, occult, magical, mysterious, unusual, unlucky, coincidental, creepy, spooky, scary, horrific, frightening, supernatural, numinous, or weird in the slightest about the holiday of Halloween… NOTHING!"
Then everything went so dark that nothing could be seen whatsoever.
"Perhaps the sun went behind a cloud," proposed Tails nervously.
"Or someone turned the lights out," suggested Shadow brightly, although they were outdoors and it was high noon.
"Or Shadow just jinxed us all with his ominous predictions," Knuckles grumbled.
"Ominous! That's the word I was looking for," Shadow said, apparently believing that his long list of synonyms for "scary" was still too short.
"What? Did you just say Shadow just shanked us all?" bleated Sonic, white with terror. Somehow he had the power to turn albino randomly. "We're all doomed! Save me first! I'm most important!" He dithered for a moment, then dashed head-on into a tree.
"More for me," shrugged Knuckles, devouring Sonic's lunch while appearing wholly unconcerned about the odd darkness.
The light slowly faded back, as if the sun had realized that the only people scared of the current situation were an unconscious person, an effeminate midget, and Shadow the Hedgehog. Apparently nobody else in the entire town had been even slightly perturbed.
Sonic walked in with a pile of newspapers.
"What are those for?" asked Knuckles nervously, remembering the Sticky Chaffinch Incident of 83.
"Why did you remember that incident? It didn't involve newspapers, or even Sonic for that matter," Shadow scolded him.
"How did you know I was remembering that?" Knuckles asked suspiciously.
"I read you like an open book!" leered Shadow. Before anyone could ask what exactly Shadow intended to communicate by saying this, Sonic slammed four pumpkins down upon the spread-out newspapers.
"These are our jack-o-lanterns," he explained, trying to smash Shadow's in with a sledgehammer. Shadow teleported his pumpkin to safety with Chaos Control, and Sonic ended up smashing his own table.
"I'm gonna carve Rouge on mine," said Knuckles pompously.
"All right, I'm carving Knuckles' mother on mine," Shadow proclaimed.
"Guys, I think you're supposed to scoop the filling out of your pumpkin first," suggested Tails.
"Shut up, Tails. What would you know?" asked Shadow arrogantly.
"I think that's the way you're supposed to do it, Shadow, that's how you put the candle inside the pumpkin," Sonic explained.
"Journalists often defend the underdog in an attempt to put a more personally beneficial spin on their story," spat Shadow, as if Sonic was a journalist. "I'll stick with the basics."
"Suit yourself," shrugged Sonic, somehow conveying what he meant through the raising of his shoulders. He pulled out the glop inside the pumpkin and threw it into a pie tin. Knuckles and Tails followed suit.
"Now what heretical conspiracy are you following? You're being brainwashed by Sonic's loony nonsense, you know," Shadow declared severely, tracing lines on his pumpkin where he wanted to cut.
"Making pumpkin pie is not loony nonsense," grated Sonic, who seemed to be the only one willing to defend his opinions.
"Oh yeah?" challenged Shadow belligerently. "What are you going to do with the seeds? You can't have pumpkin pie with SEEDS in it!"
"That's why we TOAST the seeds separately!" growled Sonic, indicating a bowl of seeds that had been separated from the orange pulp.
"Oh yeah? Well, at least my mother isn't a Neanderthal!" shrieked Shadow, pulling out his pumpkin carving knife and brandishing it threateningly.
"What?!?" snorted Sonic, standing up with malice in his eyes and pulling out a switchblade. "At least my mother isn't the consolation prize for people who try to sneak across the US-Mexican border and fail!"
"At least my mom doesn't braid the hair on her back!" Shadow snarled, pulling out a dagger.
"At least my mother doesn't have a ticket booth outside her bedroom door!" Sonic retorted, getting out a pair of sais.
"At least my mom doesn't have to replace the springs in her mattress every four days!"
"At least my mom hasn't grown an immunity to STDs!"
"At least my mom is related to me!"
"At least my mom and dad aren't first cousins!"
"At least my mom and dad weren't the horny teen couple in all the Friday the 13th movies!"
"At least my mom and dad weren't the horny teen couple in all their honeymoon videos!"
"At least my mom and dad are married!"
"At least I didn't marry my mom!"
"At least my mom doesn't name her body parts!"
"At least my mom doesn't get arrested so she can go to woman's prison!"
"At least my mom doesn't get arrested so she can go to juvenile detention center!"
"At least my mom doesn't have three pimps!"
"At least my mother doesn't get pregnant just to earn food stamps!"
"At least my mother didn't go home with the pizza boy as a tip!"
"At least my-"
"SHUT UP!" shrieked Tails, slamming his fist on the table.
"I agree," lied Knuckles, who was putting a top hat and a cape on his mustache for some reason.
Sonic and Shadow looked at each other. They had been pulling increasingly large blades from increasingly improbable locations, until Shadow was now wielding a jackhammer the size of the table and Sonic grasped a massive Grim Reaper scythe with a spiked handle. Both reluctantly set to work trying to cut their pumpkins using these enormous implements.
"I pity you," sneered Shadow as Sonic tried to pull the spikes out of his hand from the pointy handle of his scythe.
"Likewise," grinned Sonic impishly as Shadow's jackhammer fired the pumpkin across the room, where it hit the large statue of Shadow that its inspiration had purchased lately. The statue shattered into suspiciously small fragments.
"That's suspicious," Sonic muttered needlessly. He recalled what he had seen earlier that morning… a flashback began.
An unshaven Sonic wandered down the stairs. He was trying to grow a beard, which meant that the tan skin around his mouth was now just blue like the rest of his body. "Heh, being awake before everyone else is great, if you ignore all the downsides. Shadow's not around to keep me from defacing his statue! Prepare to be de-faced!" Sonic pulled out a large knife, obviously with the intention of cutting off the statue's face. Get it, like de-face… oh, never mind.
Anyway, Sonic threw away the knife and pulled out some spray paint and graffiti tools. Just as he was about to set paint to statue, he heard muttered whisperings from the statue.
'This better not be one of Eggman's ludicrous plots to spy on us," grumbled Sonic. Why Eggman even bothered to spy on the heroes was not clear, seeing as they never did anything to Eggman unless provoked and whenever he did anything that might provoke them and might be better kept secret from them if he wanted to succeed, he sent them a letter of notification. Anyway, Sonic listened to the statue, until he realized with surprise that it was actually individual pieces of the statue speaking.
"All right, boys, is everyone clear on the plan?" growled a gravelly grain of granite alliteratively.
"There are women here!" shrilled a feminine voice.
"And men," said a masculine voice redundantly.
"Nobody likes a politically correct person," grumbled the gritty granule of granite.
"We're not people, we're mineral particles," clarified another voice.
"SHUT UP! Now, does everyone know the plan? At the slightest provocation, we disperse at great speed until nothing remains but a massive pile of useless sand!"
"At least my mom isn't a massive pile of useless sand," argued Sonic.
"HIDE!" cried the gravelly voice, as if a massive statue of Shadow could conceivably conceal itself.
"Wouldn't that count as the slightest provocation?" asked another voice.
"There are women here!" insisted the girl grain, as if there had been any further assumption otherwise.
"SILENCE!" screamed the gravelly voice again. Sonic ambled into the kitchen, vowing never again to watch his screensaver for six hours while drinking Hennessy.
"That was a rather obnoxious flashback," commented Knuckles as it ended, while Shadow's head combusted with rage at the treachery of his statue.
"Guys!" announced Tails. "I've finished my pumpkin! It depicts the historical event of the Goths sacking Rome!"
"Goths used to be the name of some sort of tribe," Sonic explained to Knuckles, as if anyone cared exactly what Tails' undoubtedly boring jack-o-lantern would be. Tails smiled broadly and turned his pumpkin around.
It showed, not a group of tribesmen attacking Roman citizens and soldiers, but something else entirely. It showed a bunch of emo, 20th century-style gothics quivering with terror at the mere notion of war and fighting while a bunch of Romans gleefully massacred them. How Tails had wrought such ornate detail in his small pumpkin was not clear, but that was unmistakably what it was.
"Nice detail," admitted Shadow grudgingly as Sonic keeled over in demented laughter. "You can even see the CD that dead gothic girl was listening to."
"How are yours coming?" asked Tails as he put an electric light bulb inside his pumpkin to light it from within.
"Pretty good," declared Knuckles. "See, look how much detail I put into it."
Tails looked over and felt sick. Knuckles had drawn a fairly decent graveyard with zombies staggering around, with the letters GIVE ME YOUR CANDY written across the top.
"Um, good job," he said weakly, trying not to appear horrified.
Knuckles turned to look at his pumpkin to see, as Headwater Daddy would incorrectly say, "a scene of true contempt." The zombies were now all holding dishes full of ice cream and bowing down around a statue of Knuckles that was holding a tub of ice cream on high. Added to the words GIVE ME YOUR CANDY was the addendum BUT IF YOU HAVE ANY NEAPOLITAN ICE CREAM, THAT'S EVEN BETTER.
A vein bulged in Knuckles' forehead. "WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!" he howled until his throat couldn't bear the scream any longer. He flailed around in utter rage. "WHAT is WRONG with NEAPOLITAN ICE CREEEEEEEEEEAM?!?!?!?!"
"Surely you can't believe I did it!" protested Shadow and Sonic in unison.
"LOOK AT THAT!" screamed Knuckles, jabbing a finger at the statue of himself. As his scream faded out, he heard odd speech coming from his pumpkin. He bent down to listen, urging everyone else to come.
"All right, just as we planned!" snarled the same gravelly voice that Sonic had heard from Shadow's statue. "At the slightest provocation, the pumpkin molecules around the border disintegrate and disperse! The less likenesses of those infernal furries the better!"
"There are women here!" complained the area lining the statue's foot.
"SHUT UP!" cried the gravelly voice.
"That's bizarre," said Tails. "How are yours going, Sonadow?"
As everyone stared at him with disgust and horror, he shrugged. "What? It's just a port-manteau of their names."
As Knuckles took Tails aside and tried to tell the fox what Sonadow meant without actually explaining it, Sonic and Shadow looked at each other's jack-o-lanterns.
Sonic had wielded his reaper scythe very efficiently, carving the Mona Lisa with two devil horns on his pumpkin. After Shadow was done laughing at how stupid and not scary this was, they both looked over at Shadow's pumpkin.
It was a total mess. Seeds were splattered all over the outside, the skin was scarred and torn as if it had been thrown through a thorny bush, and the only real carving was a massive crater that Shadow had ineptly created using the jackhammer.
"Er, good job, Shadow," Sonic stressed, patting Shadow on the back.
"Is there anything wrong?" inquired Shadow ominously, reaching for his Chaos Emerald.
"Oh, no! Nothing, heh, wrong," gulped Sonic, fearing for his life.
"Now for costumes!" said Tails. "And we'll roll the dice on who is forced to give out candy."
"OK, let's do that first," Sonic said. "We'll roll some dice and whoever is closest to that number has to stay. I choose two."
"Twelve," Shadow declared.
"What? Oh, fine, eleven," groused Knuckles, unhappy that the two furthest ends of the spectrum had already been selected.
"Seven," said Tails.
"That's the most likely to be rolled, you know," Shadow warned.
"I know," said Tails, happy for some reason. They rolled the dice. The first one came up six. Sonic sighed with relief, though everyone else watched nervously.
The second die was slower. It teetered from five to six, five to six back and forth until it landed heavily on… two.
"Eight is closest to seven, Tails, you have to stay," Knuckles declared.
"I know," Tails repeated.
"And you can't just stay in your workshop, you have to actually give out candy," Sonic clarified.
"I know!" Tails insisted.
It was then that the three others, had they been more observant, might have picked up on an infuriating conspiracy. However, they merely shrugged, told Tails where the boxes of candy were, and changed into their costumes. As the sun went down at unsurpassed speeds (from noon to sunset in 2 minutes), the three trick-or-treaters emerged.
Sonic was dressed as Stewie from Family Guy. Knuckles was disguised as Snoop Dogg. And Shadow wore the garb of a hippie.
"See ya later," they shrugged, leaving the house. Tails grinned and sat down, a bowl of candy by his side.
"Any minute now," he grinned as they left.
"Why do you think Tails was so happy about staying? It's almost like he wanted to," Shadow inquired, brushing his tie-dyed quills out of his eyes. He was barely recognizable in the dark.
"I don't know, but it's weird, whatever it is," interjected Sonic, trying to walk between two trees and getting stuck due to his football-shaped head. "We're getting all the candy, all the fun, all the girls…"
Little did they know that Tails would have the last laugh by the evening's end. But that's another story. Well, actually it's this story, but it'll wait.
Sonic rang the doorbell of the first house. A woman walked to the front door and opened it.
"Trick-or-treat!" they chorused. "Give us candy!"
"You should be ashamed of yourselves!" she snapped. "Adults, plundering candy! This is a holiday for children!" She slammed the door.
"Ah, well, she's probably just in a bad mood," shrugged Sonic. They moved on.
Sometime later…
"Why, oh why didn't we bring Tails along with us?" grieved Sonic, tears streaming down his face. This seemed a bit of an extreme reaction to the situation of getting no candy. However, every house they had gone to had refused to give them candy. Well, except for Amy, but they weren't in her neighborhood yet.
Knuckles was not listening. He was busy composing freestyle raps. "If you're looking for a hustler there's no one better, I'm not like other rappers, unravel like a sweater, I'm basking in the glow of my hard-earned cheddar, use Benjamins to test out my new paper shredder…"
"PAPER?" snarled Shadow the hippie. "Hemp is where it's at! And how'd you earn all that money? From the Man?"
"Hey, I hate the police! And the feds! And the government! And the white man!" growled Knuckles, pulling out a gun. "What are you accusing me of?"
"GUYS! Stop it! We aren't getting anywhere," Sonic barked. "Let's go to Cream's house, I hear all the girls are gonna be there. Having a party, I think."
"Finally, some rewards for our hard work!" shouted Knuckles joyously, firing his gun in the air to celebrate. Shadow grabbed the gun from him and threw it down a manhole.
"I hate violence!" he whined. Knuckles smoldered with fury, but they walked off weaponless to Rouge's house.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Tails was having phenomenal success. Everybody loved his jack-o-lantern so much that they were actually giving him some of their candy. Tails chortled as he gorged himself on chocolate, wondering whether Sonic, Shadow and Knuckles were having fun.
Tails took a brief break to go to the bathroom. When he was in there, he heard some people at the door. As he returned, he saw them walking away with disappointment.
"What luck!" he crowed. He had managed to avoid giving out huge amounts of candy to the greediest kids on the block. As he inspected his own stash of candy, the doorbell rang again.
He opened the door to see Amy, Rouge and Tikal. "Hello, ladies."
"Trick-or-treat!" they chorused, laughing. Rouge was dressed up as a policewoman, Tikal as a schoolteacher, and Amy as a ballerina.
"I thought you would be at Cream's party," Tails smiled, dispensing candy among them.
"Oh, you know," grimaced Rouge, toying with a curl of her hair, "it was OK, but Big and Froggy and her Chao were being really annoying, so we just decided to leave. She has plenty of other guests, don't worry."
"I thought you'd be over there!" Tikal declared. "After all, you and her…"
"Yeah, we might not be going as strong," Tails confided. "Plus, Sonic, Knuckles and Shadow forced me to stay here. They're going trick-or-treating, so I have to stay and give out candy." He did not mention that he had very willingly decided to stay.
"Oh, poor Tails!" gasped Amy, giving him a hug. "Sonic shouldn't have done that! You want us to stay? We've hit almost every house by now."
"Sure, come on in," Tails grinned, receiving hugs from the other two ladies. It was appearing to be a very successful night.
However, Sonic, Knuckles and Shadow were not having any success at all. They had taken a taxi to Cream's house, but it had been very awkward and uncomfortable since Eggman was driving the taxi as part of community service. After he ungraciously deposited his passengers in a swimming pool, the sodden heroes ran the rest of the way Cream's house, only to find nobody there except Big, Cream, Froggy and the Chao.
"Come stay with us! We'll make a jigsaw puzzle!" Cream pleaded as the trio stormed out, enraged that this Halloween was shaping up to be the worst one yet.
"Where are the girls? I need some old-fashioned loving!" Shadow protested.
"You WOULD need love, hippie!" shrieked Knuckles. "I'm a gangsta! We gangstas don't love anyone, especially not our ladies! I got so many ladies, I use 'em to test out my new paper shredder!"
"I will not ask how that works, I will not ask how that works," vowed Shadow, repeating his mantra through gritted teeth.
"Guys, forget it," Sonic grumbled. "Let's go back home. At least Tails is having a less fun time than us, and we can bully him into giving us the leftover candy." They ran back home, unaware that Tails was having a far better time than they could dream of.
Back at Sonic's house…
"So how are things going with you and Cream? Not really well?" inquired Amy sensitively, nuzzling Tails' cheek with her lips.
Tails, whose relationship with Cream was better than ever, shook his head piously while slipping his arm around Amy's waist. "Oh, you know, we're just sort of developing different interests. I guess I'm looking for a little more in my ideal women… er, woman."
"Want a piece of candy, Tails?" asked Rouge, who was lying on the floor with candies on her stomach. Tails reached out for one, but she slapped his hand away. Tails picked up the candy with his tongue from her stomach and somehow removed the wrapper the same way, and Rouge smirked.
"So how are things with your boyfriends? They don't really tell me much about that," Tails grinned when he finished the candy.
"I'm tired of Shadow!" objected Amy. "I mean, he's nice and all, but he's not like Sonic. But even Sonic…" She sighed dramatically, leaning into Tails.
"I know what you mean," Tikal stated, lying down with her head in Tails' lap. "Sonic isn't really what I'm looking for in a relationship." Tails took the wrapper off of a piece of candy and placed it into her mouth, taking his time in extracting his fingers.
"Knuckles isn't right for me either," Rouge declared, standing up and sitting on Tails' lap. Tikal moved her head away with a disapproving squawk. "He's just too… he won't let me know about him. You'd let a girl get close to you emotionally, wouldn't you, Tails?" She turned around in his lap so that she faced him.
"Not just emotionally," murmured Tails. He hadn't seen this kind of action since his pimping escapades in Chapter Four. "I'd want a girl to be connected to me spiritually… mentally… and physically…" He smiled widely as Rouge pressed herself tighter to him. Amy and Tikal moved in on his sides, and Tails prepared for probably the first furry four-way kiss in all of history…
"Tails! We're home!" grumbled Knuckles from the hall. Rouge looked around in panic, as did Tikal and Amy.
"We didn't do very well," sighed Shadow theatrically. Tails quickly directed each girl to a hiding spot and sat down as if he had been lonely and ignored the whole evening.
"How did you do?" said Sonic as the three male furries entered the room.
"Oh, not too bad actually," said Tails lightly. "There were a few perks here and there… three of them, in fact."
"All right, as long as you weren't bored," said a totally oblivious Shadow. The three men walked away to lament their bad luck.
"See ya later, Tails," whispered Rouge seductively as the three women left, each giving him a long drawn out kiss.
"This is the best Halloween ever!" smiled Tails, digging into a bowl of candy.
"This is the worst Halloween ever!" cried Knuckles, Shadow and Sonic morosely.
"This is the fattest Halloween ever!" wailed a man inside Eggman's taxi.
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Due to pressure to release this before Halloween, I wrote 7 pages in one day. Review.