Before the fall of Lindsay Cibos' ill-fated Sonic club, Stef brought the KateStory to them...and it was Good™.
This is really popular with Sonic '95. It's a reply-to story that has humor, Tolkien, Animaniacs, singing candy machines, Rising Darkness...
So here we go:
Kelly (X, remember? <G>) was a girl who wanted to go on an adventure, so one day she went on one. Kelly went to a park and saw an old man sitting on a bench. She went over to him and...
(Here's where you reply.)
- Kate
...he fell down. "Hmmf. A cardboard cutout," Kelly muttered. So, she went home.
- X
[Editor's Note: I was really keen on getting the thing over with...DD was coming and all, and I had hope for it back then.]
...and when she got there, a huge eyeball monster stood at her door and it lunged for Kelly, when the...
- Kate
...ice cream truck drove by. Kelly and the eyeball both ran to catch up with it.
"Hey, Kel," the eyeball said, "my treat!" It pulled out a few bucks.
"Billy!" Kelly gasped, and threw her arms around her boyfriend. "What, is it Halloween already?"
Billy shrugged, and was about to explain, when...
- X
...the ice cream man turned into a huge, slimy, disgusting ficklewad, and...
[Editor's Note: ...Ficklewad...?]
- Kate
"Abusing ice-cream privileges, are we?" asked a familiar voice. There was a zap, and then nothing was left of the evil ice-cream man except a smoldering heap.
HX blew on his finger, like cowboys blow on their guns in western movies. "How ya doin'?" he asked.
"Hedgehog X!" Billy shouted.
"Sorry I didn't give you time for relaxation," HX said, "but we're in trouble. We just realized that, although Kate has regained her sanity, the Median Effect is still working."
"And you drafted us to help you stop it," Kelly muttered, rolling her eyes. "Great. Last time, we were supposed to help, but you forgot all about us."
"Never mind that," HX said. "We've got a ride to catch..."
Billy gasped, as the huge vehicle rolled up. "What is that thing?!" he asked.
Hedgehog X replied, "It's..."
- X
"...Dr. Robotnik's Carnival of Fun! Fully portable and even comes with a free lesson in roboticization!"
"What will we do, HX?"
- Dr. Robotnik
"Robotnik?!" HX growled angrily. "What's he doing in our story?!"
"He's messin' with our heads," said a voice. HX, Kelly, and Billy whirled to find Kate standing with X. X was the one who had spoken.
"We gotta stop this roboticization," HX said.
"'Scuse me?" Billy asked.
"Turning living beings into robots," X explained. "Luckily, I've got a way to counter it."
Before he could be stopped, X ran forward and jumped into the roboticizer. There was a huge explosion.
Kelly's eyes widened. "Is he...is he...?"
"Nah," HX replied. "He'll come back when we need him most in a future part of the story. But, for now, we'll have to go on without him."
Billy scratched his head. "So, you can't roboticize something that's already a robot. I gotta remember this..."
- X
"What?!" HX screams. "I've been tricked!"
HX turned bright red, which is something his enemies rarely see him do and not get seriously hurt. The carnival went up in a billion zillion flames.
"Okay, we'll just use the magic map!"
"No!" Kelly and Billy screamed, "Not the map!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Billy sliced the map in half.
"Okay, not the map. We'll walk. Um, Billy, how did you get so many eyes?"
"I played Duke Nukem II too long," he replied, and shrugged.
"Oh."
- Hedgehog X the Burnt-Finger Kid
[Editor's Note: Whoops. Looks like he didn't see my post until this point...]
"Right!" HX confirms as they're walking. "And for that reason we have Marvin!"
"Marvin?"
"Marvin the Paranoid Android!" he said brightly, as a large metallic man lumbered onto the scene.
"How are you doing, Marvin?" HX asked.
"I hope you know that suicide missions make me very depressed."
"Shut up!"
- Hedgehog X
"Uh, let's please get away from this area before X catches up with us," Hedgehog X suggested. "If he sees what kind of scrap we dug up for his replacement, he's gonna beat the..." HX stopped, because the next word was not approved by Prodigy bulletin boards.
"They're all around us," Marvin said, clinging to HX's shoulder.
HX smacked himself in the head. "What have I done?!" he asked.
- X
"Er..." HX mumbled to himself, "Hi, HX, we brought Marvin in case Robotnik makes about ten zillion roboticizers, yeah?"
Kelly looked at him in a very confused manner. "Talking to yourself is a sign of impending mental collapse."
"The problem with being in someone else's control," HX explained, "is that half the time you say something totally contradictory to what you wanted to say, and there's also the problem of personality clashes."
"Huh?"
"You don't do what you were planning to!"
"Oh...Billy, what happened to all your eyes? You're normal again!"
"I tried talking to Marvin and he hit me over the head with a rancid block of cheese."
A vampire ran past them.
"It is Halloween!"
- Hedgehog X
Suddenly a flash of black came by, and Batman and Robin stood there, when the...
- Kate
...Riddler came by! Everyone was trapped for the next two hours, unable to stop laughing. For once in their lives, everybody thought it was a setback that Jim Carrey is so funny.
"I knew this was gonna happen," Marvin whined.
- X
Later...
"Must we leave, HX?"
"Yes! If Jim catches us, he will keep showing old reruns of Three's Company to us!"
"You mean...??!!"
"Yeah, that's why he's so weird."
"But I thought you could beat him like Robotnik?"
"He's unstoppable!"
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!"
- Dr. R (next!)
"In other words," HX said, "let's run." The team ran far, far away. Finally, they got to somewhere else. It was a funny somewhere else.
- X
[Editor's Note: Dah! Median Effect again!]
"Now move, unless you want to see Once Bitten!"
Everyone ran, but Batman was stopped and made into a tire from a Big-O store manager. The Riddler's suit was made into a new cap for Link (who isn't in the story but he gets a new cap anyway). Robin whined that he was out of a movie career, but it didn't matter because he didn't have one anyway.
- Hedgehog X
Weird things floated by, like pieces of chicken and pizza, and the Animaniacs ran everywhere.
- Kate
Amy Rose pops in out of nowhere...
- Amy Rose
...and Stimpy fell out of the sky right by Kelly.
"Aagghh! Not the dream sequence!"
"Last time," HX muttered, "I got seriously hurt. But not this time. I'm going to stay right here..."
But then HX was trampled by the other 7 characters who appeared in Kelly's original dream. They scrambled all over the place and eventually collapsed on top of each other.
"HX!" Tetrax screamed. "We found you!"
"I might," HX hissed, "have to kill you."
"Murders are so depressing," droned Marvin, and counted 999,999,999 sheep before going to sleep in a millisecond.
- Hedgehog X
"...Twelve...thirteen...fourteen of us," Kelly counted. "Me, Billy, Kate, Stimpy, Amy Rose, Marvin, and the 8 members of the Ego Trip Squad. That's almost three times as many as we had before!"
Marvin, who was clearly a light sleeper, got up. "Nearly three times as many people to kill," he muttered.
Then, he saw Stimpy walking off. "Wait!" he wailed. He grabbed Stimpy's leg, and started sobbing. "Don't leave us! Please!!! If you leave, there'll be thirteen of us...and thirteen's an unlucky number!"
"Our lives are in Stimpy's hands?" Tetrax asked. "Something tells me we're in for it."
"Hey," the Lone Anti-Basher said, "I've got a solution! How 'bout several of us leave with Stimpy, so we'll be left with less than thirteen?"
"Sounds good to me," Kate said. "Who's volunteering?"
All hands, except Marvin's, went up.
So, everyone left. "Finally, we ditched that creep," Billy muttered. "Roboticization or no roboticization, he's a pain in the..."
"Yaaaaaaah!" came a scream, and a body came running through the brush and jumped on Kelly's shoulders. "Hide me!" he screamed.
"Hoo boy," Billy said. "I spoke too soon."
"Marvin," HX said, "why are you following us?"
"Don't leave me back there," Marvin begged. "I'm afraid of the dark!"
- X
Soon, a portal to a parallel universe opened up and sucked everyone into it. Then everyone fell into the other world headfirst.
- Amy Rose
[Editor's Note: Yikes! This is the worst example of a Median Effect in the whole thing!]
...sat by him.
She asked, "What are you doing?"
He didn't answer.
She looked at him. He was breathing, but his heart wasn't beating. She...
(Reply.)
- Trigger
...Then the guy turned into a monster in a robe with long protruding fangs and sharp claws!! "I've got you now," he growled, and disappeared.
(Reply.)
- Jaguarundi
"X?" HX asked.
"Yes?"
"Who turned into a monster and grabbed who?"
"I don't know, I didn't get up."
"Neither did I."
"By the way, X?"
"Yes?"
"Since when did you catch up with us?"
"Um...uh oh!"
"What?"
"I think we have another hole in the plot."
"Why don't we get up and find where we are?"
"Okay."
They got up and found themselves alone in a very familiar world.
"Great, we just left here before Book 3 ended!" HX whined.
They were back in wherever DIRS took place.
"We have to fix the hole," X said. "Again."
"Maybe if we ignore it it'll go away."
- Hedgehog X
[Editor's Note: Dah! Again!]
"Hey X! I figured it out! The monster was the man on the bench, and we went right back to the beginning of the story!"
"How did the beginning of the story catch up with us?"
"How the !@#$%^&* am I supposed to know, we just fell into a parallel...paralell...alternate dimension and bam! The story started over!"
X thought about this for a minute, "Hey, I got it! We flew back in time through the portal and to an alternate reality! Things are starting over and happening differently!"
"Where are the others?"
- Hedgehog X the astral one
"Hoo boy...holes in the plot sure are fun!" X muttered.
"Yeah, well, the Grail almost fell through one!" said a voice. X whirled.
"Ah...good to see you, Will and Bran," said a man with wild gray hair and a beak-like nose.
"Merriman!" X/Will shouted in delight, and hugged his friend and mentor.
HX/Bran took his shades off, revealing his gold eyes, reminiscent of a cat's. "What's this about a grail?" he asked.
"We must find the Greenwitch," Merriman said, without further explanation.
If I've told ya once, I've told you a centillion times: READ THE DARK IS RISING SEQUENCE FOR MORE INFO!
- Will Stanton, the Sign-Seeker, also known as X
Hey, I thought the one about the portal was the 1st reply! I only saw one...didn't know there were more...oops.
PS: Does everyone make up a background for their new character?
- Jaguarundi
X/Will whirled at the voice. "No prob," he said, "it was an honest mistake. As for taking a new background for your character...if you would please post some general info, that'd be nice. I'll include you in Dreams Distorted (a big event on the Video Games BB) soon. Thanks."
"Will, c'mon," HX/Bran said, tugging at his sleeve. "On with the quest!"
The team waved goodbye to Jaguarundi and continued their journey.
- X
"Let me get this straight," Bran said, "we're back at the beginning of the story, caught up at the beginning of a totally different book, the Median Effect is still on, we're looking for a green witch..."
"A grail called the Greenwitch!" Will corrected him.
"Yes, anyway, and I have eyes of a cat, the body of a human, and the spirit of a hedgehog (or whatever). X, we have to figure out what we're doing!"
"We're looking for the Greenwitch!" X said.
"We're stopping the Median Effect!" HX said.
"We're trying to find the others!" they said together.
"Except," HX said, with a sly look in his gold eyes, "Marvin."
"Yes," agreed X. "Marvin can go and melt himself."
Meanwhile, Kelly got up and found Kelly.
"Hello?" Kelly said, "Who are you?"
"I'm Kelly," Kelly said.
"This has been a strange day. I just fell through a portal."
"And I was kidnapped by a monster."
"And HX fell through a hole in the plot."
"How do you know that?" Kelly asked.
"I read the last few chapters!" Kelly answered, and disappeared. Kelly looked at where Kelly was and got eaten by the monster.
Bran tripped.
"Hey, it's Kelly! How did you get here?"
"I read the last few chapters!" Kelly answered, disappeared, and reappeared again.
"Median Effect," X said, and shrugged. All three got up.
"Will, come down here!"
"Sorry!"
They went in search of the Greenwitch (and at the same time HX searched the Thing for a Sandwitch).
- Hedgehog X the psychotic one
"Uhhh...we started all over?! I didn't know that?!" said Amy, not paying any attention. "Anyway...what type of parallel universe did we go into?!"
- Amy Rose
"No telling," said Will. Then, to Bran, he said, "The Greenwitch is not the Grail! The Grail is of the Light -- it's one of the four Objects of Power. The Greenwitch is of the Wild Magic -- something that is neither Dark nor Light. As I said before, read the bloody books!"
"Oh, no," Bran muttered, "Will talks with a British accent?!"
"That's not the worst of it," Will replied. "You're supposed to be using a Welsh accent!"
"Welsh?" Bran asked. "How am I supposed to manage that?! What do the Welsh sound like?"
Will shrugged. "Who really cares?" he asked. "Just hold Eirias close..."
- X
"Who?"
"Read the..."
"Shut up! I know."
"You know who Eirias is?"
"No, I know what you're going to say."
"Look, I don't know either, because this is your chapter of the story."
"Hey, cool!" HX said, and X ran into a tree. HX went mad and flopped around like a fish, and Kelly turned into Eirias.
"Oh, there she is!" HX said.
"Fool! Eirias may or may not be a living creature."
"That's it!" HX screamed, and snapped his fin. They were in a totally random place.
"Where are we?" X asked.
"A totally random place."
"Which is...?"
"Two to the power of three thousand, five hundred sixty-four and falling," said a voice on the intercom.
"The starship Heart of Gold!" groaned HX, and turned off a Douglas Adams reference generator. This caused a power surge through LOGIC and split him into six different pieces.
"Aarrgghh!" screamed Kelly. "I have psychic blood all over me!"
- Hedgehog X the red blood cell that doesn't exist, er...
"Eirias, oh ye who refuses to heed my millions of obnoxious naggings," X said to HX, "is the crystal sword that will be used to vanquish the Dark. As for Douglas Adams, well, we can't have this -- I'm the only one who's allowed to make references to something the other writer(s) can't understand!"
"Fine," HX muttered. "FF3, then."
The team appeared on Setzer's airship. X was Sabin (natch), and the others were...
- Sabin X
"I thought that was the Master Sword!" Locke said. "Hey, I actually found a character without a personality clash!"
"Unk," was all Terra said.
"Terra was..."
"Kelly."
"Fitting," abin aid, I really have to fix my S key.
"Unk," was all Cyan said.
"Billy?"
"Yes."
"I'm so depressed," said a Magitek armored carrier. Sabin and Locke threw him off, partly because he was Magitek, partly because he was Marvin.
"I wonder who Kate is," Sabin aid.
- HX
Sabin-aid! Get your ice-cold Sabin-aid! On me!
"Hmmmf," Sabin said. "The way Kumba...errr, Cyan and I have it set up in our FF3 game is as follows:"
Terra = Kate (Both have powers)
Locke = Knukls (Both are treasure hunters )
Edgar = Sonic (The kings!)
Sabin = X (The best for the best! <G>)
Shadow= HX (Mysterious)
Celes = Sally (Had to do with the planet's empire)
Cyan = Kumba (Second best for second best! <G>)
Gau = Tails (Both young; slight resemblance)
Setzer= Rotor (Gamblers; techies)
Mog = Spike (Couldn't think of anyone else)
Strago= Chuck (Old!)
Relm = Bunnie (Both love to draw!)
[Editor's Note: Reference to Lindsay "Bunnie" Cibos, not the character.]
"I think that covers everybody, in the order that they come," Sabin said.
"Well then," Locke said, "why are things changed?"
"Good question," Sabin replied. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it! For now, we need to find Kumba and Kate...wherever they may be!"
"Who's Kumba?" Cyan asked. "And when did he come into the picture?"
"No time to explain," Sabin replied. "Let's go!" He grabbed the airship's controls, and they were off.
- Sabin and Cyan
"What? No Robotnik?" grumbled Robotnik. "Then I'll unleash all of my SWAT-Bots on them!!!!!! Snively, activate my Personal Shuttle, I want to see this in person!!!"
- Dr. Robotnik!
"Oh boy," Sabin muttered. "We're being tailed."
"Who?" Locke asked.
"It appears to be Robotn -- I mean, Kefka with some Magitek troopers."
"Joy," Locke said.
"Let's make a run for Figaro!"
"Roger."
- Sabin and Cyan
Terra (guess that's me) was confused when that strange thing called the Median Effect began again, and then something familiar began...
- Terra/Kate
"Oh, joy," X muttered. "Where are we now?"
"Please don't make this another part from The Dark is Rising Sequence," everyone pleaded.
"Well...all right," X said, "but in return, you have to read the books!"
"Hey," HX said. "Isn't that..."
"Yes," X said, "it's...it's..."
"The all-knowing Dead Horse from GamePlayers magazine!" everyone burst.
"Dead Horse," X said, "how do we get out of here?"
The Dead Horse sort of just sat there.
- X and Kumba
Created 04.03.27