Sonic Insanity
This will probably be the last chapter of 2007, but keep on the lookout for new updates! I ain't finished yet!
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
WEDNESDAY, OCT 10th, 2007… a day that will live in infamy…
All was well in the Sonic household. Shadow was sleeping in, Knuckles was in his room listening to Lil Beezy Dub Money Boy or some such equally ludicrous "artist," Tails was in his garage making adjustments to an invention nobody would ever care about, and Sonic was on the computer, checking his e-mail. As usual, there were no messages in the in-box. This may have been because Sonic's spam filter was set to block all e-mails with any of the letters between A and Z in the subject line or body of the e-mail. He sighed with deep content, convinced that he was too popular to receive e-mails anyway, and began his usual activity of making Google searches for his name and seeing what showed up.
On this
particular day… Sonic would be in for the web search of his life!
As soon as the new screen loaded, Sonic was hit by it. Link after link glared at him, all giving him the same dire message. No matter where he looked, every inch of the white space was filled with the same concept. Even the ads were flashing the horrible words into his face. The idea, as summed up by the least eloquent message on the screen (which was saying something), was this:
OMG sonics n supper samsh bros brall!
"WE'LL SEE ABOUT THIS!" roared Sonic, lunging out of his seat and stomping out the front door. In his bedroom, Knuckles grinned and ratcheted up "Big Boyz Don't Cry (Lil Beezy Dub Money Boy Remix)" to its maximum possible volume, unaware of the chaos that had just been unleashed…
"What do you mean, under contract?" snarled Sonic. "My contract lets me decide what games I'm in! You can't just throw me out like bait to the fanboys who bought the Wii just for Sonic and the Secret Rings! You can't sell me like a whore to Nintendo! I'm not doing it! I was never consulted!"
"Sonic," said Mr. Naka, head of Sega, seated comfortably behind his desk. "Sonic, Sonic, Sonic, look at the facts! Our company's practically bankrupt! We've had to make concession after concession to Nintendo! We stopped making game systems. Then we put you on the GameCube, and on the Wii. We've got to cooperate with them or else they'll buy us out, or worse- drive us out of business! Take a look at this!"
Sonic fumed in silence, his blue complexion turning redder by the second, as Mr. Naka clicked a remote. Suddenly a Power Point presentation… well… presented itself on the blank white wall. It showed a long line graph that was steadily decreasing.
"These are company earnings since 2003," explained Mr. Naka. "They've been going down constantly! At this rate, we'll have to make Super Monkey Ball our primary franchise, and then we'll be out of business in three years tops! I mean, when the entire concept for a series is based on Samus' Morph Ball combined with Mario Party-style infantile mini-gaming, you're sunk!"
He clicked the remote again. This time a new line graph appeared, one that was going up.
"This is a hypothesis of how our company will do once we've teamed up with Nintendo," explained Mr. Naka. "Your presence in Super Smash Bros. Brawl has generated massive interest. We get 5 percent of the revenue for each game sold, as well as our fee for licensing you! It'll revive interest in your 3D career, and then we can squeeze 3 or 4 more games out of you before we stick solely to 2D and work with Nintendo for all our projects!"
"That reminds me!" growled Sonic angrily. "What about Mario and Sonic at the Olympics, eh? You thought you'd slip that one past me?"
"We're planning a line of Nintendo and Sega characters at all major internationally relevant events," bragged Mr. Naka. "Take a look at these!"
The next slide was an Excel spreadsheet disclaiming the following:
Tails and Luigi at the Special OlympicsKnuckles and Wario at the United Nations
Shadow and Waluigi at the NATO Peace Talks
Silver and Bowser at the Destruction of the Berlin Wall
Amy and Peach at Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Rouge and Daisy at the World Fair
Eggman and Yoshi at the Boston Tea Party
Metal Sonic and Toad at the Colonization of North America
Cream and Baby Bowser at the Attack on Pearl Harbor
Team Chaotix and a Goomba, a Paratroopa and a Lakitu at the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
"These are ridiculous!" argued Sonic. "Nobody's going to buy these increasingly unimportant games! You need to stick with your guns and release a classic recapturing of my old glory days!"
"We did that with Sonic the Hedgehog," said Mr. Naka.
"In that case, you need to make the game more appealing for an older audience! You know, some edgy gameplay, maybe some swearing…"
"Shadow the Hedgehog."
"Some light, easy gameplay that's oriented for children?" said Sonic weakly.
"Amy the Hedgehog."
"WHAT?"
"Just kidding."
"Oh, good, you had me startled…"
"Sonic Riders."
"FINE! FINE! FINE! You know what? FINE!" Sonic screamed.
Sonic P. Ledgefrog, that is, who was listing the reasons he was appearing in court that day. Meanwhile, Sonic T. Hedgehog was not fine with the situation.
"YOU KNOW WHAT?" he raged, quills standing on the end and singeing. "I've just about had enough of this mistreatment! I hereby declare my contract null and void! I'm a free agent now!"
"Ah-ah-ah!" grinned Mr. Naka, pulling out a massive scroll of parchment labeled The Contract in old Gothic font. "You might recall a certain dark and stormy night many years ago when you first laid pen to this paper… remember what you signed it in?"
Sonic's guts pickled with horror as Mr. Naka indicated the signature, which was very red and bloody.
"If you break this contract, you die!" cackled Mr. Naka. "You're Sega's forever!"
"Actually, having my blood on that paper doesn't mean anything," said Sonic. "Unless you believe in occult sorcery or some such warlock nonsense, such as Harry Potter." He winked slyly at the camera.
"Are you insulting my religion?" seethed Headwater Daddy, emerging from inside a hollow stack of papers on Mr. Naka's desk. "All must bow before the Almighty and Decrepit Mollusk! No one will be standing once the heretics have been, shall we say," here he twiddled one of his loathsome 'abdominal fibers' and leered, "eradicated."
"Remember that time that we wanted you to come here and make unwelcome interruptions?" said Mr. Naka skeptically.
"Remember that time when I killed yew?" inquired Headwater Daddy menacingly. "No? Oh right- IT HASN'T HAPPENED YET! BUT IT WILL SOON! LOSERS!" On this lackluster note he curled into his Morph Ball, blew a hole in a nearby Bendezium wall and promptly fell into a pool of lava that had apparently been inside the wall.
"Well, er," said Sonic, desperately trying to conceal the horrible giggling noises that were emerging from the lava, "as I was saying, that contract is meaningless! Writing blood on a piece of paper doesn't tie your life force to it!"
"Oh yeah?" snarled Mr. Naka. "Look, I'll prove it!" He cut himself lightly on the arm, not near a vein, and dabbed the tip of an old-fashioned feather quill into the blood. Pulling a fresh sheet of paper out of his desk, he wrote his name simply down on the paper.
"All right," he growled at Sonic, who was looking completely befuddled at this point, "here's the test. Rip that piece of paper in half. If nothing happens to me, you win. If anything out of the ordinary happens, I win."
The two halves of Sonic's brain clashed together: foolish imbecile versus obnoxious critic. Sort of like when Mecha and Headwater Daddy fight. Which is usually over the most inane and meaningless things possible, not because they consider these things to be worth fighting over, but because they specifically compile lists of the most inane and meaningless things possible just so they can fight over them. On the one hand, the Obnoxious Critic side of Sonic's brain wanted to harshly put down Mr. Naka for his ridiculous idea and prove him wrong. On the other, the Foolish Imbecile did not want to think about it. "Don't rock the boat, don't rock the boat," it prayed feverishly. Eventually the two sides jammed together and all he could do was nod with a sickly look on his face.
"Good!" declared Mr. Naka. "Here, take the sheet of paper and do whatever you want to it."
Sonic took the paper and looked at it. With a sly grin he took a gun out of his pocket and blew a hole in the middle of the paper. Mr. Naka fell over dead.
"Wow, what a moron," said Sonic, choosing to ignore the fact that the bullet had gone through the other side of the paper and hit Mr. Naka in the heart. He pocketed the gun, but as he reached for the contract, it crumbled as one of its two signers died. All that was left was a small scrap of bloody parchment with Sonic's name on it, which he threw contemptuously in the garbage before leaving.
Meanwhile, back at home…
"Lil Beezy Dub Money Boy got those dollars stacked, spending money all the time cause being poor is whack, I always have money even when I spend it all, got a grill in my mouth shining like a disco ball," rapped Knuckles in tune, or lack thereof, with the music pulsing through his speakers. He had to admit that LBDMB (Lil Beezy Dub Money Boy) didn't have a good flow, good beats, good lyrics, good guests (four per song) or good music. But he sure did have an awesome grill!
Knuckles dreamed of the day when he would be able to get a Disco Ball Grill as popularized by LBDMB. Other gangstas could only use the reflective silver power of the disco ball as a metaphor regarding their grills. With corrective plastic surgery, however, LBDMB's mouth could unhinge like a snake's so that he could literally put an entire disco ball in his mouth. Knuckles, forever in awe of this accomplishment, glued sequins to a bear trap and tried to stick it in his mouth, with disastrous consequences.
Real rappers don't have their tongues pierced, he thought miserably as he fingered the inch-wide hole. Or their cheeks for that matter… Knuckles blushed at the thought of his second use for the bear trap… a grisly flashback involving a punctured posterior was about to unfold when somebody opened the refrigerator door. Knuckles yelped and leaped into the tub of margarine, completely hidden. Shadow got the guacamole and closed the door again. With a sigh, Knuckles climbed out of the margarine and enjoyed his chilly clubhouse, perfectly at ease… at least until Shadow put the guacamole back in.
The epic saga of how Knuckles came to embrace the refrigerator as his true home may be explored some other time. However, now we will focus on Tails and the filming of his new music video, The World Was Beautiful And So Were You (The Difference Is That After You Died, You Were Still Beautiful). This appalling melodramatic and weepy song was one Tails had come up with. It was extremely progressive and complex, consisting of a grandiose verse-chorus-verse-chorus song structure and coming in at a titanic four minutes. The piano during the verses and the 20-second, 8-note guitar solo really added a dense and operatic feel to the whole thing as well.
"All right," said Tails to his film crew, an extremely unhappy Shadow, "this is the part during the second chorus that we talked about. You know, the one where I'm staring into the mirror and the reflection is screaming and going nuts while I'm just standing there looking at it…"
"How much money are you going to give me?"
"Yes, you'll get it all," Tails said impatiently. "Now here's the blue screen. Just film me in front of it. Go from my left side, around my back about ten feet away from me, then end facing my right side."
"How much money is-"
"YOU'LL GET YOUR DAMN MONEY!" screamed Tails, who had been asked this twenty-seven times. "Now just film me the way I asked!"
Shadow, sighing, completed the assigned task. Tails made overly dramatic motions for a few minutes and then stopped.
"All right," he said, "now what?"
Suddenly the refrigerator door blew off its hinges and Knuckles crawled out, wheezing and gasping. Before he could fully emerge, a pair of massive gorilla arms pulled him back and out of sight.
"Um… he doesn't need any help," said Shadow, turning his back on the screams. "Anyway, as I was saying, about that money-"
"Kids! I'm home!" yelled Sonic from outside. "After, er, renegotiating my contract with Mr. Naka, it appears that I won't be starring in any Nintendo ventures anymore."
"Er, Sonic," said Tails, "when the fanboys discover that you aren't going to be in Brawl anymore… and since Mr. Naka's dead, they can't blame it on Sega… who do you think they'll go after?"
"Nintendo," said Sonic proudly.
"Yes," said Shadow, catching on, "and when Nintendo claims not to know what's going on, who do you think they'll go after?"
"Omega," said Sonic, even more proudly.
Tails and Shadow looked at each other nervously. Knuckles limped out of the refrigerator, only to be pulled back in by the gorilla. Nobody noticed.
"Er, Sonic," began Shadow.
"DUCK!" roared Tails, and without hesitating they all fell to the ground. A hail of arrows flew over their heads and embedded themselves in the wall.
"They're already attacking!" shouted Tails, reaching under the couch cushions and pulling out riot shields. "Everybody get in the basement! Run for cover! I'll set up defense!"
"Er," said Sonic, desperately trying to avoid the possibility that the fanboys were after him, "perhaps… you know how Mr. Davidson down the street has his little archery competitions…"
Each window in turn was smashed by a flurry of heavy, softball-sized rocks. The house rocked on its foundations as a grenade went off.
"Those kids and their Little League," chuckled Sonic nervously as machine gun fire perforated the piano next to him with a horrible sound of shattering keys.
"Sonic, you idiot, WE ARE UNDER ATTACK!" roared Knuckles from the cellar door. "Get over here or you'll be eaten alive!"
"Eaten alive?" shrieked Sonic. "I think not! It's time for drastic measures!" He opened the closet and began frantically searching through it. Mops and brooms were impatiently batted aside until eventually he discovered what he was looking for… an RPG launcher.
"Prepare to die, you mutinous, rabid Wii fanatics!" he roared as he fired a missile out the window. It flew across the yard… and then fell dead with a limp, muffled puff.
"Er," said Sonic unenthusiastically, and then he heard a helicopter above the roof and men dropping out of it onto his house. Without delay he leaped into the basement with Knuckles and Shadow, the latter of whom tried to push him out but failed.
"All right," said Knuckles in the subterranean gloom. "We've locked the door and sealed it shut. Now we just have to wait until Tails kills them, or until they kill Tails and break through. In this case I have prepared cyanide pills for all of us to take so that they can't take us alive."
"Um… all right, Knuckles," said Shadow sarcastically. "That sounds like a good long-term plan for success."
"WELL WHAT'S YOUR PROPOSAL! THEY'RE TRYING TO KILL US!" screeched Knuckles demonically as the living room caught fire above them.
"We can tunnel out," said Shadow happily. "Using Knuckles' glove spikes and my rocket boots, we can burn and chisel an escape route out of here. It should be done in two weeks if we work night and day and make it only two feet by two feet."
"TWO WEEKS? TWO WEEKS?" thundered Knuckles. "WHAT ARE WE GOING TO EAT?"
"The mole people do not eat," said Shadow, making bizarre chirping noises. "They have learned to go for months without sustenance… they have evolved to acquire nutrition by absorbing it from the cave walls through their pores… and if worst comes to worst we can always eat our own young…"
"Knuckles, we aren't mole people," said Sonic.
"Well, there's a first time for everything," said Shadow as if stating the obvious. "For food… the meat of fakers is pale and rancid, but it will keep us alive…"
"DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!" snarled Sonic, clutching his ribs defensively. "I won't let you guys eat me!"
There was silence. Sonic could see nothing. There was a gentle scraping sound on the floor.
"GUYS? This isn't funny anymore. GUYS! STOP IT! WHERE ARE YOU?"
A dry laugh came from his side. Sonic let out a sob and swung. As he turned, a cold finger traced a line down his back. He shuddered and flung himself to the ground, choking on his fear. The laugh came again from closer by. As he got up, a strand of cobweb hit him in the face. Sonic swore, swinging at it- and found the light switch. He tugged and light flooded the room. There was nobody there.
"WHERE ARE YOU?"
"Just chilling out," said Shadow and Knuckles behind him, playing Guitar Hero.
"WHAT WAS ALL THAT LAUGHING FOR?" Sonic screamed furiously. "I WAS TERRIFIED FOR MY LIFE!"
"Well, see, about that," said Shadow awkwardly, but then somebody hammered on the basement door.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX