This chapter actually has a lot more words than both of the previous chapters, so if you like a leg-numbing read, this is for you. Otherwise, read at your own risk.
The next thing I felt was an inexplicable, sudden throbbing sensation. They were out to get me... again. But atop that constant motion, there was a calming echo dominating my psyche. Whatever you want from me, take it!
The servers are the seven Chaos...
Chaos is power, power is enriched by the heart...
The controller is the one that unifies the Chaos...
At those words, my life as a part-time Mobian was offically pointless. By that point I'd forgotten about my past life enough to feel awkward in my virtual reality. Sometimes I'd break down in agony from being stalked by that odd man (or... hedgehog) out feeling. But this time, I couldn't. Something in my mind wouldn't let me. Or maybe it was just my body reacting to some imaginary hand of doom to my disadvantage?
Whatever it was, I tried to fight the crippling effect with anything I could use. The trouble was, my options were heavily limited. What with the too-much surge of demolition attacking all my limbs, I had to rule them out instantly. Also, I couldn't feel my feet standing on anything.
I don't know when it hit me. All that time I'd been plagued by everything that I'd rejected, a certain poem/prayer/whatever had been hanging at a distance. I didn't know what it was about. I couldn't figure out any relevance it may have had in my situation. I'd always had big goals. But the others thought they were crazy. They even went as far as to say that I was crazy. I'd always said that anyone could be the hero of the day. But in the usual occasions in which I referred to myself, everyone else said that I had a big head, like too big for my own good. Not literally. But at that crucial moment, at which it seemed almost perfectly timed, I concentrated among the madness on those intriguing words...
I could feel the lines coming out, impeded by the Sparta that ensued.
The servers are the seven Chaos...
As soon as its true meaning had come to me from between the lines, I knew that I was still dead.
Chaos is power, power is enriched by the heart...
(I'm coming back... I think I'm ready...)
The controller is the one that unifies the Chaos...
At that moment, everything that had violently attacked my body (and my senses) spontaneously receded. I found myself hanging onto something imaginary. Or maybe I was just floating... But at that point, that alien sense of selflessness contained in me, vanished, and soon enough, as you might see frequently in the world of cheesy cartoons, after a moment of stationary hangtime, I crash-landed on the stereotypical computer-generated, low-res tarmac.
But lately I've been blind...
I had no time to react. The moment I hit the tarmac, I felt something behind me snap. Hard. I almost screamed and/or groaned in agony. Somehow, it didn't mentally shock me that much, having used the unknown power of mind-over-matter. And that, fellow fanfic writers (and readers), is how I got the crooked tail.
"Kid, get up! I think I can beat these guys!"
You leave me all alone, left in time...
When did Sonic resort to hiding his arrogant self? I tried unsuccessfully to be cool with it. "What do you want from me!?" I spazzed, not expecting a legit answer.
He proceeded in a surprising way. "Ok first off, I apologize if I went out of character at all the other day, or just two minutes ago. Second, did you ever notice how these guys look dang familiar? I think I can remember their weak spots. If we can attack those areas, we could possibly beat this stupid level!"
You left me here to die, left in time...
Of course I, distrustful as I was known to be, had an effective way of knowing whether someone was tall-taling, so to speak, when it came to a topic like that. Having regained my confidence, I retorted, "You know, I'd love to help you out and know that I'm being backed by someone I admire, but I just don't think it's worth my time anymore. I mean, I know I want to feel secure and all that, but I've gained a lot of — I don't know how to describe it — intriguing trivia from my experience with this game, and now I figure there's more to life than beating the bad guy all the time. You know how you winning and Dr. Eggman losing is just tradition, right? But what if the two of you could negotiate? You know, work something out? I dunno."
He really lit into me. "The only problem with that is that he always wants the universe to himself, and he will stop at nothing to destroy me! His selfish actions are just unforgivable. I don't know how much it'll take for him to turn over a new leaf, or even if I'll believe him when he does!"
You leave me all alone, left in time...
I shook my head in shame. "Just go without me. I'm too broken right now."
"Alright, suit yourself." In the blink of my left eye, he was right where he said he'd be a minute ago.
The arms of time are breaking off...
I limped towards the shattered tenth wall at which I'd chukked my emerald, hoping to find it somewhere among the over 9000. Then I noticed three switches side by side suddenly appear, sitting underneath the precise point at which the stone would've smashed into only a hundred pieces had it failed to pass through. They were all shaped like the levers one would flip to turn on the living room lights, but were also much bigger. I stopped to think over my options almost too carefully. One flip could've led to certain death, while another might have unlocked the untold riches described before I'd ever heard of a game where you were the character.
"Switch all of them!" a sudden voice yelled loudly inside my corrupted cranium as to what to do with these curious beasts, so I reacted accordingly, flipping the one in the center first. After waiting for something to happen, I took a minute for some serious thinking before shoving the left lever down.
Civilization is on trial...
I started to feel it almost immediately. The entire arena shook with great evil and force. Evil force. Something like that. Objects everywhere were sent flying in all directions. Some robotic monster bosses disintegrated, fell into disrepair. About half were left still attacking a certain blue dude violently. In the midst of the new Sparta that ensued, I noticed the tenth wall split in half, the two resulting pieces sliding about a foot apart from each other, revealing a vast open field of beta testing. Or so it looked.
I continued to ponder the whole point of a game like this as I strolled into this vast world of beta. I'd sincerely hoped that it had something to do with a certain robot builder/doctor/mad scientist. For the longest time in twelve hours, everything in my view looked suspiciously normal.
The clocks eliminating time...
I felt like I'd been staring at the blah, open background for too long when a series of pixels started to distort into a random form, like a picture taken from one of those old-style cameras developing before my eyes. I was seeing things. I jolted my vision in the opposite direction, as my eyes soon felt to be aching like hell. I shoved my fingers upon them slowly in a dragging motion in an attempt to relieve the restlessness. The only thing I felt was equal damage to my fingers. Sooner or later this caused my fingers to give up, too. However, after I'd recuperated, the distorted image was still vastly upon me, now even more abnormally twisted, as if the beta testing field was really a freak show. But wait... the pixels were morphing into something real...?
I continued to stare openly, mezmerized at the tricks my mind had to have been playing on me as the pixelated structure became progressively clearer, all the more... lifelike.
Do you believe...
"I saw nothing!" I kept telling myself. But I could not deny that I did indeed see something that disturbed me to a point at which my mind was bleeding horribly. The problem with life was that I knew there were certain sights that I wasn't supposed to see. If only I didn't have to guess which ones they were.
I found myself breathing heavily, recovering from an unexpected panic attack. I don't remember what that was about. The only thing I could think of was escaping level 7, being ready to admit that I could not complete the game. Regardless, it was bound to give me nightmares.
...in nothing!?
The literally glowing figure that approached me amid my paranoia appeared to show panic in her expression as well. She stood well past my short stature, by about half a foot. She wore a navy blue dress with single stripes of silver running up and down on the sides. Her blonde/yellow hair was tied back, extending past her shoulders. She was missing a silver gauntlet, as evidenced by her bare (and horribly frostbitten) left hand. Somehow, her hands looked unusually small.
She appeared to falter in her footsteps, like a drunk guy, or someone who'd been asleep for God-knows-how-long. Or maybe both. As she continued to stare in her clueless expression, all she could come up with to say in her clueless tone was, "Where am I?"
As the female hedgehog's glow receded, I got that uncomfortable feeling all over again. "I don't know," I lied to some extent. "I know that I somehow warped into cyberspace, but I couldn't tell exactly..."
"Cyberspace?" she interjected chillingly. "How long have I been... you know... what's the word I'm looking for?"
"That doesn't matter right now. What matters is that we have to get out of here before we're trapped..." That was just a guess.
She quivered at the mention of being trapped. I figured we were on the same page. "I'll be right back," I said, although I had no clue where I was going. But then I noticed she was following me. Humbug.
I was ambushed by a certain blue dude as I (and the slightly older female) strolled into the boss battle scene, where neither he nor whatever kind of monster he was taking on had the upper hand. "You!" WHY DON'T PRESIDENTS FIGHT THE WAR? "Thank goodness you're here. I was wondering where you wandered off." He was now pointing past me at the hedgehog girl. "But uh, who is she?"
"I don't know!" I snapped in my blatant, yet frank tone.
"Never told you her name, eh." I guessed that she'd softly shook her head at that remark, because the next thing he said was, "So tell me, what is your name anyway?"
But before any response could go audible, that suspiciously sinister voice squeaked, "Now, you will die." It sounded like something you might hear from the safety warning from a certain TV program on Spike. Suddenly he went crazy. "MWAHAHAHA! TIME FOR MY ULTIMATE REVENGE ON HUMANITY! NO ONE CAN STOP ME!"
I couldn't tell whether to feel thankful that it wasn't me he was after, or pitiful for my worst enemy, or even if I should call his bluff. I began to debate over flipping the last switch.
A panicked she-hedgehog peeped more to herself than out loud, "That sounded awful familiar..."
I didn't want to know. By that point it had occurred to me that Sonic had dashed off again to fight this boss. It was evident that he was struggling to maintain his reputation of never giving up and sporting the 'tude. Bad time to sing a certain song by Joan Jett.
A sudden rush of energy forced into me the urge to retrieve that damn FOURTH Chaos Emerald from the beta field. I took some steps into the "real" side of level 7, turned around, and got into that starting position that I'd pirated from blue a long-ass fuqqin' time ago.
"Stop there for a moment," I heard a familiar voice shout from a distance. Unnecessary proof that this guy was capable of hitting the speed of sound. Needless to say, he screeched to a halt right in front of me. "I took care of the last switch, and I think it seemed to work against this beast."
"Great," I said hurriedly, and worriedly... and scurriedly... Not paying any attention to his topic, I tried to dash into unknown territory.
"Stop! If you go in there, you'll disintegrate!"
"You serious?" I was clearly puzzled. It may have just been another social beating. "How would you know?"
"I went in there myself. I could feel a tingling sensation welling up within me, and then I noticed I was dissipating into thin air..." I could tell he was pondering if he should be saying any of this. "But thankfully it's gone now. Who knows what could've happened to me had I stayed in there any longer..."
Of course there was still the matter of freak number three. "If that's what happened to you, then how did she get here?"
That question seemed to crush him mentally. I could feel the thoughts racing in his mind. How would I know? I lost track of what level I'm on, for Pete's sake! Ok, maybe he would've known that he was on the last level. But still, I wasn't expecting a legit answer.
The rumbling sound returned to intimidate us with evil and force. Evil force. Whatever. I found myself glancing left in the midst of the mass destruction pit.
"Over there!" I shouted, pointing at the dark hole that had just opened up on the black-and-green checkered wall. It twisted in such a distinct pattern that after having stared at it for ten seconds, I felt like my mind had been twisted in a similar manner. But then again, I'd been used to that dilusional feeling since 2010. Ok, maybe not.
I had initially planned to use the escape beam as a last-resort effort to ditch this dump! But as I debated its potential lethality, guess-who tried to leave us here without any advance warning...
"Sonic?" Gotcha again! "Where did... oh, of course." I was about to curse at him out loud. Then a sudden force dragged me in reverse by my shirt! I jolted my head slightly to the right and saw the black hand of death. That cold dark frostbitten hand nearly stared me into convulsions.
"Let him go," the feminine voice cracked. "He says he has to do this on his own."
"And I have something else to do on my own!" I snapped. Without thinking, I swatted the cold death note away from my shirt and dashed as fast as possible to the robotic beast, ready to kill as he (or, it) was. But at that moment, I realized that I'd forgotten how to pull the "Sonic spin dash" without being splattered all over the walls. Before I knew it, its metallic hand was right upon me. I saw no clear opportunity to squeeze by in one piece.
"Look out!" a champ-like tone blurted. I felt myself shoved sharply to my right, with no indication of where I even was in proportion with the hunk of iron, or silver, or whatever. That wouldn't be the only thing on my mind for much longer, however, as I was soon met with his cold grave stare. He seemed to communicate his concern for my possible mental disorder through this dark expression.
I lost my cool again, ready to quote Mike Muir. Instead, I almost yelled, "Sonic, do you really want me to check into a mental institution?!"
"Oh no, nothing of the sort! Don't be crazy. But, uh..."
The backlight of the background suddenly burned out the instant after he paused to think. I was ready to accuse him of blacking us out. I was ready to yell "you killed us all". I was ready to punch that son-of-a-bitch!
A force field opened up from thin air. As it began to expand rapidly, everything in front of it vanished into its gravitational pull. Sonic took one look behind him, and nearly lost it.
"Move out!" he snapped. Once again, faster than a bullet, he zoomed out of my sight. I'd missed my target — again!
She immediately followed suit. I guessed that they were breaking for the exit. Apparently a blue hedgehog really didn't give a damn 'bout his reputation. I, for one, figured that one of the switches had to do with the opening of the black hole-esque portal. I could make out someone in the distance passing through it. That was when I got ecstatic. Finally I can escape this dump! But wait, Amy will probably be waiting on the other side to kill me again... but who gives a f&#k!
As I made a run for the exit portal, I fixated my view on the female, about sixteen or so. She swerved a bit to avoid a fatal hit from Mr. Laser Cannon way over there, but also to properly align herself with the target area at which to strike. But then I realized I wasn't making as much progress as I would've liked. How the hell does it seem so far away? Am I still dead?
I was ready to conclude otherwise, but the moment she got close enough to the portal, she charged with great power and speed... but she slammed into an invisible shield with a blatant thud. I felt it too. Ouch!
I panicked yet again! To think Sonic would even think to leave me (and someone else) to literally die in a video game was just crushing my valvularicarsonatabloid on the GROUND! "I don't need your handouts, jackass!"
That was just a random thought. As I quickly recuperated, so did she. Perhaps not all hope was lost after all. I kept a-rollin' (unlike the train, which stopped in Albuquerque a long-ass fuqqin' time ago) until I caught up to her, careful to give her enough room to fall back safely without sideswiping me in the process. I tried to keep myself contained. It's like the poster said. Just keep calm... and Gangnam Style. Wait, I did NOT just say that!?
"I'm gonna try again... I honestly don't know what happened." She sounded to be reeling from the appalling blow that shook the now dark arena.
I was shaking my head in shame, pondering the circumstances of my inevitable death, as well as reminiscing my "death" from two levels ago. Or maybe I was just being selfish. Either way, I was shuddering at the thought of the imminent threat of death just before the not-so-crushing bump returned to shockwave my ears. I didn't want to believe that the hole of corruption had struck down on the she-hedgehog... again. But the moment I lapsed from my state of confusion, I noticed her standing against the beam of rejection as if taped to the wall. Great. We're going down... down with the sickness.
I had to help her release the imaginary force pulling her up against freedom (or rejection, in her case) when she gestured me to do so by tapping her gloved hand on the wall. Once that was out of the way, she quivered chillingly. She looked back at the rapidly expanding force field, picking up speed as it eliminated the rest of the game, straight in our direction. "It's hopeless... I'm gonna panic..."
Amid the dark of the abandoned last boss arena, her reaction inspired a chilling comment of my own. "We're trapped..."
"I'm gonna die..." Her tone hinted slight panic.
"No, we're gonna die..." As calmly as possible, I walked over to the exit portal.
"I can't live like this...!" Her voice was now revealing an utmost bout of tremor and panic.
"I'm freaking out..." I still tried to keep my cool. Somehow it had worked up to this point. I held out my left hand at the beam of destiny. Expecting a similar outcome as had been recently demonstrated, I was a bit surprised when it passed through the portal unharmed, thankfully. I chose not to clarify this peculiar incident, so as to avoid a brutal "that's what she said" line.
Tears were now heavily leaking through her eyes. "I need another chance at life, or so help me... please!" She pulled my shirt towards her (again) and squeezed me within her bear arms (or arm bears), forcing a great deal of pain into me — physical from me, emotional from her. "It's just too much to handle..." She was openly sobbing on my dark shirt as she contorted the words.
I didn't know how to hold her in this moment of unfairness. I slowly, quietly, backed away while still within her grasp, as trying to release it would've likely done no good. As "we" neared the beam of destiny again, she hopelessly muttered, "I'm sorry... I really don't wanna die here. So many things I'll never get to see..."
I was numbly uncomfortable from her display of... something. Mainly because I'd never had a girlfriend. In either case, I noticed she was looking me in the eyes, her expression filled with panic. I felt myself slipping into convulsions... again.
I took a deep breath, and eyed her for a short moment. "I'll find a way," I whispered. "I'll get you out of here. I'll get you to safety." A split-second later, I wished I hadn't said that.
"It's no use. It won't do any good," she said.
"I have an idea. Just go with it."
Maintaining the fact that I and she were not a thing, we walked a bit closer to the black hole sun, holding one another's gloved hands tightly. "I hate loopholes," I grumbled to myself as I motioned the impossible pair of gauntlets towards freedom.
"Whoa... how'd that happen?"
I panicked as the force field ravaged upon us. "I have no time to explain! We have to get outa here before that force field sucks us into pure nothingness!" A split-second later, I wished I hadn't said THAT.
"Nothing...?" she started. The evil force of the vortex abruptly lifted her off the stereotypical low-res tarmac, threatening to swallow her into oblivion. Somehow, I got a feeling that she'd had an experience like this before, so needless to say, I refused to let go... not like the chick from the Titanic movie, who actually did let go.
I didn't notice how badly I was failing against the all-powerful vortex of doom. I didn't notice the she-hedgehog crying her voicebox out for help. I didn't notice where the hell I was... But the moment I did, a sudden boost of energy engulfed me, and I fought back. Hard.
We were through.
I woke up, somehow unable to move. The idea that I'd been playing video games for too long struck me like the numbness of my left and right legs that followed. I found two controllers to my left. Yes, I was finally back in the basement.
I pushed myself up and looked down for a glimpse of whatever the hell happened in the real world while I was trapped in cyberspace. The menacing red goo all over my shirt seemed to taunt me maniacally. I figured my life wasn't completely back to normal. I twisted my view to the right, only to notice the crooked tail... and a young female hedgehog, lying on her side, with hardly any indication of being alive. She matched every aspect of her appearance in the game, from the blonde hair to the unusual navy blue dress, to her small hands, to the missing gauntlet. At that sight, I realized that the whole experience was real.
I then realized that my legs were so numb, I couldn't move them or prop myself to my feet. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, I had to use the little upper body strength I had to slide out of the cursed game chamber, back up the stairway to heaven, all by trial and error. As I neared the top, I could hear a meeting going on, probably consisting of every other freak acquainted with a blue blah.
"And so, I'd like to commemorate all the brave things he did for us... even if he almost broke us." I noticed him raising his champagne glass. And I know what you're thinking, so I'll do the reacting for you. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU...
"To Zenith the Hedgehog!" he concluded. What?!
The rest of the band raised their wine glasses, vodka containers, bottles of beer, whatever, in response. "To Zenith the Hedgehog," they said in unison, their drinks clinking with the other drinks. Again... what?!
I had no choice but to reveal myself amid this curious investigation. Once I got a clear view of the "meeting", I shouted, "Hey, what the hell are you guys going on about?"
Before a blatant deal of clamor could arise, a pink hedgehog lost it. "ZOMBIE ATTACK! OMG, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"
And they did. Except for Rouge the Bat.
The entire living room literally became a stereotypical (seriously!) zoo breakout. A two-tailed fox was stealing all the bread in the fridge. A not-so-silly rabbit had to take a wicked yes. As Rouge remained seated on the coffee table, apparently reading the colorless newspaper, seemingly motionless, a black hedgehog stormed up to me, charging with great force. His foot swung right at my face, and before I knew it, I was flying back down, once again unable to control my motion. I'd only noticed the wall coming about a foot from my face when I slammed into a hard surface — the last thing I felt before I slipped into another blackout.
A voice inside my head is inquiring, "Are you there? Can you hear me?"
"Thank you for rescuing my child..."
"I can't believe that evil man made her go through such a terrible afterlife..."
"You really weren't supposed to escape, but when you destroyed the artificial emerald, you also released her from the glass prison that had contained her for 58 years..."
"You and she will return home eventually..."
"In the meantime, you'd best go back to your friends. They won't be waiting for you much longer."
"Wait... who are you...?"
"Lookit, he's waking up!"
"He's alive! Thank goodness!"
My left eye flickered open the slightest bit. I had a hard time understanding where I was, or the appalling blow to my face that ended me up here in the first place. I also had a hard time understanding the umpteenth-plus-one weird dream from two minutes ago.
"Uh... where am I?" I stuttered, stirring as I tried to sit up. "What happened last night?"
"Whoa, take it easy!" the fox snapped. "You might not wanna try to sit up for a while."
I was obviously puzzled by that sentence. "Why, are my legs busted or something?" The thick layers of cloth covering me from the waist down startled me a bit. Then the answer came to me. "Where's ol' Doc Severinsen?"
He pointed his "thumbs-up" that way. "Went to get a coffee. I don't understand it either. Beavers are not coffee drinkers!"
"Can you at least tell me what happened?"
The pink hedgehog sprinted into the room, panic lurking not-so-deep within her expression. "It was me, ok?! I'm the one who got you into this mess! I don't understand why I did it... oh geez, I sure hope you'll be ok..."
"Amy!?" And so it got way out of hand in an instant. "How did you get here? Shouldn't you be dead?"
"Yeah, but I never finished the game. Let's face it, kid... we're both invincible."
"Uh-huh..." interrupted the fox awkwardly. "Also, we found you hiding in a flip-open toolbox in the basement, and so we tried to take off your helmet and pu you out..."
"Are you out of your God-forsaken mind!?" I spazzed. "You of all people didn't read the damned health warning! That helmet could've triggered a shockwave big enough to fry my brain! I could've died! And what, did you drop me and I fell to the GROUND, and broke my legs in the process?"
"Actually, yes. That is what happened. How did you know?"
"Enough of that," I ordered, moving on to a bolder inquiry: "Where in the hell did all the blood come from?"
"That came from Amy beating you up while trying to wrestle the helmet off. I don't know how you were able to fit your quills in there." Now imagine if she'd used her hammer. "So yeah. Also, ol' Doc Severinsen the coffee addict says that you're gonna need a wheelchair for the next few weeks, so you might wanna take it easy on them for now. He wants those bones to set back correctly. Don't worry, it's not permanent. You'll be back to running around and partying like it's 1999 in four weeks."
Suddenly I was (figuratively) the Henry Rowengartner of video games. This is gonna be a great summer. I noticed the female in navy blue straight to my right. That was when I figured out what I was gonna say to her.
I addressed Tails and Amy and about four other freaks behind the two, feeling weird as I stated my next request. "Uh, could you guys like, leave for a brief moment? We need to have a private conversation."
"Ok," Tails said. He turned back and motioned his finger towards the exit. "Yeah, let's leave him alone for a while."
As soon as the last of them left the room, very awkwardly, she got a little closer, but remained far enough back so as not to spark the imminent rumor that she and I were a thing. Because we were not. I couldn't help but feel disturbed by her presence. "What are you doing here, anyway?" I asked.
"You just don't understand what happened... do you?"
"Do you?" I pushed.
She was evidently hesitant to go on about that curious incident. She wiped off the pool of sweat... and spoke of it.
"I think I was dead..."
She shuddered violently at that thought, assuming it was true. Uber-intrigued, I just sat there without moving so much as a muscle.
"I can't recall what my past life was like," she muffled more to herself than out loud.
"Me neither," I remarked. "All I remember is the life of a 12-year-old sports fan with a younger brother and a younger sister and Asperger's..."
"I didn't need to know that," she snapped.
"How did you return from death, anyway?"
Again, she hesitated. "Never mind," she concluded, shaking her head in shame. I could tell the water works was bound to leak again. "But I never wanna have to go through death again!" She was hyperventilating as she contorted the words.
"I can't stand the afterlife neither," I said. "They try to steal my life while I'm in the middle of doing something heroic for once! What's up with that!"
"Yeah, you got that right," she clarified. She took a shallow breath and muttered, "I'm sorry about your broken walking sticks..." What a vocabulary!
I lightly nodded. "I'm sorry about almost killing the both of us..."
The room was silent as death for God-knows-how-long. The only thing I wanted to say was the word "titties". But of course I didn't.
She eventually decided to break the inaudible spell, ever so carefully sticking out her ungloved hand. "My name is Maria..." That one thing I'd felt I didn't need to know, now embedded into my cranium. Bummer. "Maria Robotnik."
Now it's my turn. Don't get too nervous.
"My name's Zenith," I started, shaking all the more nervously than one could imagine, "Zenith the Hedgehog. You can call me Zenith, Z-Storm (Storm was just a made-up surname that I'd given myself in 2010, that I'd never revealed to anyone), Z, or whatever else you can think of." I reached out to grasp the weapon with my corresponding hand, and then we shook. A moment like that would only come once every two years. How depressing.
Then the name struck me in a curious manner. Thinking back to that fateful moment in 2011, the year in which every Friday was plagued by Rebecca Black's cheesy song, when I'd made a dumb excuse to battle the Time Eater involving a fake ex — "Maria would've wanted me to" — perhaps she was the reason why the black hedgehog had gone berzerk.
"You know, I think you should meet one of my friends. I bet he'd be interested in you."
"Oh really?" she said. "What's his name?"
But before I could spit out my answer, I heard the words "Game Over" from a breaking news segment on the old-fashioned video box. (Because animals can't afford HD!) I leaned to the television to properly hear whatever the vixen-reporter was talking about.
"The game's creator was revealed two minutes ago to have been imprisoned in cyberspace 58 years ago after threatening to destroy all humans over the gunning down of his grandchild. We're still doubting that he's gotten over it by now. But right now we're broadcasting a repeat of a live telecast of his hopefully preventable plan of action, and this is what he had to say..."
The screen cut to the familiar old, ugly man with a massive mustache, sporting the Ozzy shades. He had the word "evil" written all over his face. Not literally.
"Good afternoon, citizens of Earth," he sniggered. "Do not be alarmed; in a mere twenty-four hours, you all will be DEAD."
The news reporter briefly interrupted his ridiculous speech. "Whether he wants to destroy us Mobians as well is still unclear as of now."
Back to Ozzy McBaldy. "I understand you haven't had a chance to hear from me until now, so I'll keep things short and sweet, and I'm gonna quote Sylvester Stallone on this, so bear with me." How could anyone bear with this modern-day Hitler?
"I'm coming back," he continued in his sinister tone. "To settle the score. For imprisoning me." His voice distorted like a boss. "For using me."
I looked back and met her mezmerized, yet entrancing eyes. "Do you know anything about this guy?" I asked.
She tensed up a bit before answering with a lie. "No..."
The creep on the screen went on. "Sixty years ago, I launched the Project Shadow to study immortality as a means to cure my only granddaughter of this terminal illness known only as 'NIDS'. And it was obviously going well until my mortal enemies from G.U.N. threatened to shut it down on me because they believed it would threaten the existence of mankind. Which is ironic in that they were the ones who funded the project in the first place! Anyway, when I refused, they were going to kill it off by force, not considering the fact that they, the hedgehog and my granddaughter, were practically inseparable. So when I found her name on the list of fatalities from G.U.N.'s untimely raid, I just went berserk!" Blah blah blah. Been there, done that.
I dug through my left pocket for my iPhone, having miraculously discovered it there five minutes earlier. I repeatedly tapped the screen to get to my YouTube inbox.
"So when technology got advanced enough, I began working on a new project in the form of the world's greatest MMORPG, appropriately titled 'Game Over'. You know, the FPS-type thing where the guy holding the controller was also the character in the game. I designed it to be an intricate puzzle which, if executed properly by someone from the outside world, would release me from the glass prison and allow me to unleash my ultimate weapon and get my revenge on humanity... for killing my beloved granddaughter."
Something about this breaking news segment was metaphorically crippling her thought bubble until she could no longer hold it back.
"I'm his granddaughter..."
I'd never heard a Mobian say that word. Ever.
He revealed the sinister grin in his expression again. "Happy holidays, you bastards. I'm taking this to the NEXT—" (split-second screen freakout) "—LEVEL!"
So, uh... yeah. What Mark Hoppus said. Happy holidays, you bastards.