Sonic Series Fan Fiction ❯ FEIGN FABLE FIASCO!! ❯ CHAOTIC CLIMAX CONTINUES! ( Chapter 5 )

 

FEIGN FABLE FIASCO!!: CHAOTIC CLIMAX CONTINUES!!

 

 

Backstage, Rouge, Shadow and Knuckles were enjoying their little hiatus before the next act.

“Man, this place is awesome!” Knuckles exclaimed, scarfing down handfuls of fruit from the bowl in front of him.

Rouge curled her lip at him and leaned back in her sofa chair. “You're only saying that because Eggman offered you free fruit backstage!

“Yeah so?” he replied between gobbles.

Shadow said nothing but shook his head. Placidly, he reached for the cup of instant noodles in front of him.

Rouge wrinkled her nose at him. “Ugh, how can you eat that stuff, Shadow?”

He shrugged. “I just do.”

She shuddered. “It's not quite food and its not quite junk.”

“Yeah, it's just…something to eat.” Knuckles agreed.

Hearing them `disrespect' his meal, Shadow stopped eating and pushed the cup away from himself on the table. “Thank you for helping me to lose my appetite.”

“Oh no problem!” Rouge grinned “You shouldn't eat that stuff anyway!”

“Yeah, it's toxic!” Knuckles chimed in. Then broke out into song. “ `Baby can't you see…I'm callin…' “

Shadow and Rouge both stopped what they were doing and turned their attention to Knuckles.

“I'm so glad you stopped there.” Rouge commented, referring to the next line in the song.

Feeling their eyes burning into him, Knuckles stopped his warbling and cleared his throat. “ `Ohh it ain't my fault. It ain't my fault!' “ he rapped in a gruff sounding voice.

“Uhhhm, let's get out of here.” Rouge spoke up, already taking Shadow by the hand and leading him away from Knuckles. “The next part's about to start anyway.”

“TELL ME HOOWWW AM I SUPPOSESD TO LIVE WITHOOUUT YOUU!”

Annoyed, Shadow popped his head backstage and stared at Knuckles. “Go Nike and `Just Do It' “ And with that, he slipped back on the other side of the curtain.

“Yeah, yeah!” Knuckles responded nonchalantly, and grabbed one last handful of fruit to scarf down before he ran out onstage too.

-

 

Minutes later, the hostages began to refill their seats as the Intermission ended.

Once they were `comfortably' seated, Eggman began to clap, and a giant card that read “Cap” with a `l' scribbled in directly above where it should have been.

Seeing this, the audience started to unevenly and unpassionately clap. Even a few uncomfortable coughs were heard.

Not letting it bother him in the least, Eggman waved his hand outward to the stage in dramatic presentation.

“Allright, welcome back ladies and gentlemen! I hope you had a nice little break! And if you didn't, too bad, so sad! That's the way life goes sometimes!”

A few murmurs from the audience was heard and Eggman raised an eyebrow, scrutinizing each row.

One he was satisfied with the silence, he continued on with the show.

“When we last left our heroes, Hansel and Gretel, in their delirious state of hunger, had stumbled across an old villainous, and voluptuous, witch's house!! Oooohoohoohoohoohoohoohoo!” Eggman went on, trying to imitate a spooky sound.

More coughs.

“Anyway! Let us see what the voluptuous and villainous witch has in store for the children…!”

Dramatically, the curtains lifted and parted, and the little cottage made of sweets was clearly visible.

Inside the house, Shadow and Knuckles were in separate beds in a dimly lit room.

“Since it was already dark outside, the witch decided to allow Hansel and Gretel to sleep in hay stuffed beds for the night.” Eggman narrated.

“Hay?” Knuckles repeated, shifting around on the bed and pulling out tufts of hay in his hands. Curious, he sniffed it. “P U! !Where'd this stuff come from?!”

Staring at him wearily, Shadow half-frowned. “Where do you think? Maybe you ought to see if one of the cows left a rosebud in there for you.”

Knuckles gave him an odd look then grinned sarcastically. “A rosebud huh? Do you think Rouge likes flowers?”

Annoyed, Shadow sat up and hopped out of his bed.

“Hey, where are you goin?”

“Away from you…” Shadow stated plainly. “I can't sleep either.” He added, scratching the back of his head. “I'll…see you in the morning or something. Goodnight…Gretel.”

Knuckles cringed and grit his teeth together at the name. “Yeah, sure thing, brother...”

Shadow smirked faintly and shook his head as he closed the door behind him.

Heading down to the kitchen, he heard some strange noises and what he thought to be some humming.

Going inside, not much to his surprise, he found Rouge. But what was she doing?

Humming to herself, she busily kept herself occupied rummaging around in the many drawers, cabinets and pantries near the oven. After getting a nice gratuitous view of her backside, Shadow's eyes lifted to the shiny white and black mechanism vibrating on the countertop.

Stepping closer to it, he was mere inches away from it when Rouge popped up out of the lower cabinets and looked at him.

“Yes, what is it? Did you get lonely Shadow? Couldn't sleep?” she mocked in a babyish tone.

Ignoring the joke, Shadow instead reached for the vibrating object and held it up in front of her. It's shape and size resembled one of the floating bat bombs Rouge once used before, but Shadow had never seen it vibrate.

“What is this?” he asked.

Peering down at it, then looking back up at him, Rouge smiled and snatched it from him. “It's my timer. Sheesh, what did you think it was?”

Shadow smiled and shook his head. “You don't even want to know.”

Hearing this, Rouge grinned seductively. “I never knew you had such a naughty side to you, Shadow. I'm shocked.”

“So am I. And I live with it.”

Silence.

“So anyway, how did you get here, young man?” she asked, going back to the flow of the story.

Shadow shrugged. “My sister and I were getting kicked out the house by our own mother simply because she was too damn greedy for her own good and wanted all the food for herself.”

“Wow, even the shrimp?”

“Yep”

“What about the chicken?”

“Oh…don't even get me STARTED on the chicken!”

“Uh oh! Sounds like someone's a chicken fiend!”

Shadow smirked. “I dabble”

“Uh huh, I'm sure.” Rouge smirked then led him over to a large cage with thin bars.

Looking around, Shadow frowned. “What are we doing here?”

“You'll see!” Rouge chirped and pushed him into the cage.

Before he could say anything, Rouge had already begun to kiss him.

Eggman watched them and slapped his forehead. “I'm ruined” he grumbled, then decided to just go along with whatever they were doing. “And so, before the witch decided to boil her new visitor the next morning, she decided to …get acquainted with his taste a little early!”

“Mmmhmm” Rouge hummed. But then Shadow stopped her. “Wait a minute. Just who in the audience paid you to do this?”

She grinned. “No one…!” she whispered.

“Oh…Nice.”

 

Fade out!

 

“Early the next morning…”

Nothing happened.

“A'hem!” Eggman cleared his throat, but nothing still happened, but faint fumbling sounds were heard from onstage…then creaking.

Rhythmic creaking.

“Hey somebody throw the lights back on!!” Eggman shouted and at his command, the stage lights came back on.

Expecting to see something...unappropriate, to his amazement, all Eggman, and the audience, saw were Shadow and Rouge sitting at a table in the house and Knuckles jumping up and down on the bed.

“What?” he asked.

“Oh, so that's where that noise was coming from.” Shadow confirmed, taking a sip of tea. “And I thought it was me!”

Rouge chuckled nervously and cleared her throat. “I think you'd better get back in that cage for the next scene!” she whispered to Shadow.

“Oh, right.”

FADE OUT…again!

“Okay, let's try this again… Eggman started, clearing his throat and beginning to resume narrating. “Early the next morning…”

The stage lights came back on.

“…The witch had already locked Hansel in a steel cage and had begun to feed him high in cholesterol foods and tons of starbursts to help him grow nice and plump to eat!”

“Here you go.” Rouge said, tossing Shadow another Starburst. “This one's strawberry banana. Is that fine or did you want something else?”

Shadow caught the Starburst, unwrapped it and quickly popped it into his mouth. “Lime would be good.” He replied between chews.

“You got it!”

Eggman watched the two in disbelief, but kept on goin. “A-and what an unbelievably and deceivingly nice witch she could be! And a short order cook at that!”

“Rouge doesn't cook.” Shadow interrupted, munching on the lime Starburst. “She's horrible at it.”

A loud clank was heard onstage as Rouge dropped the pan she was holding. “Care to rephrase that?”

Shadow watched as hot and boiling liquid with strange pieces of foreign meat in them trickled past him on the floor and into his cage. Glancing upto Rouge, he shook his head. “No.” Then he popped another Starburst in his mouth.

“Yeah! Go Shadow!” Knuckles called from upstairs in the house. “PIMP THAT—“

“Shhhhh!” Rouge shushed, then continued on preparing a “meal”.

Baffled, Eggman blinked twice then laughed it off. “Anyway, the witch waited until Hansel had been nearly stuffed and each time she fed him, she would reach out and touch his arm to see how chubby he was getting.”

“Gretel!! Get down here!!!” Rouge called, pretending to sound like a witch.

In a flash, Knuckles rushed down the steps, with both hands holding his dress so he wouldn't trip again. “Yes, ma'am?” he asked, a bit too eagerly.

Rouge pointed to a large pot near the cage. “Get some water and boil it in there! I want to make sure your brother is nice and ripe—er I mean healthy!”

“Aye aye, capt'n!” Knuckles cheered as he rushed past Shadow's cage, flashing him a thumbs down, and went to fetch the water.

“Now, the witch was becoming poor with her sight, you see, so she had Gretel do as much of the work as possible.”

Shadow scoffed as he heard this. “The poor sight part sure says a lot about her cooking…”

The moment he said that, he had to quickly move out of the way as Rouge through a bubbling pan at the top of his cage and all its steaming contents spilled out.

“Hey!!”

“Oops!” Rouge giggled, placing her fingers to her lips. “Sorry about that! …Not…” she said, rolling her eyes and returning to the stove.

“AHAHAHAHA!!” Knuckles cackled, stirring the boiling water with a huge spoon. “Owned…!”

Finding it amusing, Shadow laughed a bit and sighed. “I'll get you both when I get out of this cage…”

“And so! As our helpless hero Hansel sat miserably in the cage, the witch went over to him and asked for him to stick out his arm!”

Doing just that, Rouge walked over to the cage and kneeled down. “Show me your arm, boy!” she sneered, getting into character.

Knowing how the story went, Shadow reached to the back of the cage and picked up one of the items that was in the pan Rouge threw at him and stuck it out through the bars of the cage.

Pretending to not be able to really see what he had, Rouge closed her eyes and felt around.

Spreading her fingers around it, she squeezed it and then plucked it. It wobbled a little, but felt very fleshy.

“Shadow, is that your…”

“…Hot dog…?” Shadow said with a smirk, waving it around between his fingers. ”Why yes, yes it is.”

Opening her eyes to see that it really WAS just a hot dog, Rouge laughed lowly so the audience wouldn't hear and winked at him. “I thought something was off…”

Shadow blushed. “Sure you did…”

Seeing the two get so cozy on set, Knuckles growled under his breath and started to lift up the huge boiling pot…

Seeing this as a great add-in, Eggman took full advantage of this opportunity. “Then suddenly out of nowhere, Gretel somehow tripped and accidentally spilled hot scolding water all over her brother!” Eggman happily ad-libbed.

“OOPS!!” Knuckles jeered, pretending to be sorry. “My bad, brother! Ha!”

Dripping wet with hundreds of degrees of hot water on him, Shadow teleported away in shock.

“Huh? Where did he go?” Rouge wondered.

Within seconds, he returned to the cage with a bunch of postcards, stamps and a sombrero.

“What the—did you just goto Mexico?!” Rouge inquired.

“Yep.” Shadow nodded. “And got some of the best shaved flavored ice I ever had.”

Then he glared at Knuckles. “Te veré en infierno, echidna…” he said with a native and distinctive edge to his voice.

Knuckles stared at him with wide eyes. “What the hell did you just say to me?!!”

“A'HEM!!” Eggman interrupted, catching Knuckles' oblivious little joke to what Shadow said. “After accidentally pouring the hot water all over her brother, Gretel had to start all over and get some firewood from the shed outside.”

With a huff, Knuckles did exactly that.

“Unknown to the witch, the two siblings had planned to cook her instead of being cooked themselves! So while Gretel got the firewood, Hansel persuaded the witch to take a look in the oven!”

“Allright…!” Shadow said eagerly as Rouge began to kneel in front of the oven.

“And not just to get a good view of her behind, Hansel!” Eggman threw in.

Shadow sulked, glared at Eggman, and stared at Rouge's backside anyway.

Shaking his head, Eggman just continued on with the story. `It's almost over with…' he told himself. “As the witch knelt near the oven, Hansel begged her to check out how small the oven was so she couldn't bake him in it!”

“Yeah” Shadow agreed, his eyes glued to the back of Rouge. “Miss Voluptuous Witch, you've obviously been stuffing me with a lot of food lately, so there's no way I'll be able to fit into that oven. So…since you've got a lot more to yourself than I ever would, would you mind crawling all the way in so I can get a better view of your oven. I mean!…uh…the lack of space in that oven…the one that you're crawling into! Whew…”

“I heard that!” Knuckles called from behind the house.

“Just hurry up with that firewood!!” Shadow shouted back.

Amused as much as she was intrigued, Rouge tauntingly climbed into the oven and moved around. “You mean like this…?”

“Yeah…a little bit more to the right…I don't think there's enough space for…oooh yeah…”

“Around this time, Gretel came into the cottage with the firewood!” Eggman announced and the second his character's name was mentioned, Knuckles charged into the cottage and tossed the firewood aside. “FINALLY! I get to have some ACTION!”

“And Gretel was absolutely right! With the witch distracted by being more than halfway into the oven, this was Gretel's chance to push the witch inside and flee with her brother!” Eggman said enthusiastically.

“ALLRIGHT!!” Knuckles cheered, throwing a balled fist into the air. “I get to push you….whoa…” his voice dropped as his eyes beheld the most glorious sight of Rouge's behind. “I think I'm in heaven!” he sang.

Shadow rolled his eyes. “Just push her already.”

Knuckles grinned and readied his hands. “And push her I shall…!”

“What a bold comment coming from GRETEL, who was obviously a little GIRL.” Eggman reminded.

Rouge snickered as Knuckles looked down at the dress. “Oh yeah…” Then something else caught his eyes and he nervously looked around and crossed his legs. “I sure hope nobody else saw that…”

“Hello…waiting to be pushed into an oven here!” Rouge called.

“Oh right! Luucky me!” Knuckles chuckled. Then remembered he was playing the part of a female and heightened his voice. “Ooh luuuucky meee! Heehee”

Irritated, Shadow threw a spoon at him. “Don't you EVER do that again.”

“Ha! You're just jealous because I get to feel how soft the witch is and you don't!”

Shadow scoffed. “I already have.”

Countless gasps spread throughout the audience. And there wasn't even a sign!

“You what?! When?”

“While you were jumping up and down on the bed…”

“Ooooooooh!” the audience jeered.

“Yeah, well at least I used mine!”

“Yeah, the wrong way.”

“OOOOoooOOOoooh!!”

“He carried you!” a random voice called out from the darkened seats.

“Ahehehem! Can we get on with this please? It's really getting a bit warm in here.” Rouge reminded.

Staring and glaring at the other, for a few more seconds, Shadow and Knuckles both tore their attention away from each other with a “hmph” each.

Back to the present task at hand, Knuckles clenched and unclenched his mitts and lightly pressed his hands to Rouge's behind. A blush ran across his cheeks and a pang of excitement ran through him---and also grazed his abdomen.

Suddenly kneeling, he clenched his stomach and laughed nervously. “Uhh...hehehe…um…cramps!” he lied…sort of.

“Mmmhmm” Shadow half- frowned.

“Could you hurry up?” Rouge rushed.

“Uhh...”

“Shoot! Let ME do it then!” Eggman shouted, running up onstage and pushing Rouge into the oven. Looking to his hands he smiled, as his eyes began to sparkle. “I shall remember this day for the rest of my life! I'll never wash these hands again!” he proudly stated, slipping some gloves on.

“Ewwll…” Knuckles grimaced, but Eggman ignored him.

“And so! The witch was defeated and Hansel and Gretel were saved!! Hansel, Gretel, come up here and take a bow!”

Hearing their character's names called, Knuckles walked to center stage first as Shadow warped out the cage and followed suit.

Exchanging glances, as well as heir own trademark facial expressions, they then turned to the audience and bowed.

Whoops and cheers rang throughout the crowds and then the two bowed again.

Then they took a step back as Eggman called Rouge out.

Kicking down the other side of a trap door, Rouge slipped out of the oven and did her runway strut downstage. Once there, she blew the audience kisses and took a slight bow.

Everybody in the whole vicinity called, whistled and chanted her name.

Inwardly she groaned `Great another fan-club...'

Bowing again, she smiled and waved.

Once she stepped back and joined the other two, all of them, including Eggman bowed and walked off the stage.

But Eggman ran back to give another announcement to the public.

“Thank you all for watching! I hope this inspires you all to work for me twice as hard! And to make it even more worth your while, I'll even consider PAYING you!!”

Eggman received multiple cheers for that one.

“And it will be more than one cent to each of you!!” he added and the cheers got even louder. “Also, be sure to stay in touch! More performances are on their way!”

And with that, the stage light faded out and Eggman went backstage.

 

Also backstage, a loud roar ripped through the air. “AAAUUGGHH!! There's SALT in my FRUIT!” Knuckles cried.

“And water balloons in my halter top!!” Rouge yelled.

Walking out down the main steps of the stage, Shadow chuckled. “I told you I'd get the both of you when I got out of that cage…! Too bad it's only a small payback this time.”

 

-@_@ I'm so sleepy.

Mel