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[McDohl]

"Didn't we get married and have kids or something?"

"I think so...it's all so fuzzy."

Kelly looked down at the whirling mass of sawblades beneath her, then to Billy, balanced on the narrow bridge with her.

"Well, this sucks."

---

A few days earlier...

"So, how much is the fee?"  Anticlimax, his look updated to blend with the spiky-haired protagonists that had become popular in recent years, adjusted the seven belts now hanging over his shoulder.

"I'M BASCH FON RONSENBURG" shouted a Mediterranean gigolo, just seconds before being tackled by half a dozen city guards.

The mysterious shadowy figure that sat opposite Anticlimax cleared his throat.

"Ahem.  Anyway, I will pay you a king's ransom."

Anticlimax mulled this over.  "A vague mission for an equally vague payment..."

He stood up and pointed to the horizon.  "I'll do it!"

He adjusted his 37 belts and 42 zippers and walked toward the horizon on a new and epic adventure.

Someone from nowhere said.  "He's too upbeat to fit in to the Nomura Squad."

---

"I'm going to fucking kill you," Thad said, pouring himself another shot of tequila before passing the bottle to Adam, who took a swig straight from the bottle.

"I know, but you missed this shit anyway, didn't you?" Adam hiccuped.

"Damn it dude, don't do that.  Fuckin' backwash."  Thad snatched the bottle back and drank his shot.  "You DO realize that I'm going to kill you if HE fucks this shit up, right?"

"Oh come on, Thaddy Slick.  You love it when someone who's not us contributes."

"But HIM.  FUCKING HIM."

"If he does anything stupid, you can castrate him like you always do."

Thad sighed  He was annoyed.  He was very annoyed.

"FINE.  Let's do this shit."  He threw the bottle and it crashed against the wall, shattering.  Thad pulled out a pistol and set it on the table in front of him, barrel pointed directly at SoraCross.

-------------

Welcome to Katestory #XVII: Thad Mentioned It In Something Almost Completely Non-related And Dohl Got The Itch FUCKING AGAIN Edition!

This is for you new people.  This is a reply-to story, where you write in the next portion of the story.  The idea is for a hive-mind to come up with a coherent narrative, but this often fails.
Source material.

[Guild]

Blaggar stuck out his tongue and adjusted the axial tilt of the fourteen-hundred and fifty-second tier's primary suspended triad support beam. Over 300,000 twigs and not a single one out of place. He stepped back and smiled an owl's smile, admiring his beautiful work of art.

"Hoot! Hoot!" was all any nearby humans heard, but Fortie the Squirrel heard "Come see what I built, Fortie!"

Fortie looked at the acorn in his hands. It was bitter and not very alcoholic anyway. He threw it down at the forest floor and hop-hopped across the branch to where Blaggar perched.

"Now, be careful Fortie! It's precarious!"

Fortie whistled and nodded. "Ohmygosh, that'sthemostimpressivethingI'veeverseen... youspentsomuchtimeonthatandnowthatit'sfinallyfinishedIgottasaygoodjob! Ithinkitresemblesanacorn. Whatareyougonnadonowthatit'salldone?"

Blaggar turned his head 284 degrees around and looked at the slightly drunk Squirrel. "I suppose I could ask some spiders to sew it all together so it won't break... and it's not an acorn, it's a Sky Scraper."

Fortie nodded. "Thenit'llbeindestructable! Goodidea, Blaggar, veryverygoodidea. What'saskyscraper, anyway?"

Just then the tree burst into flames.

Blaggar and Fortie barely escaped with their fur and feathers.

"I say, what on earth...?" Blaggar looked around before rolling back onto his feet. What he saw next frightened him to the hollow bone.

A dastardly-looking fellow wearing a watch and wielding a sword stood just beyond the edge of the forest. He laughed... a croaky sort of laugh, and the friends felt immense heat against their backs. They slowly turned around to see their entire forest had been set ablaze.

By the time either thought to look back the cloak-wearing stranger had vanished.

"What... whatintheholybirdshitwasthat?"

Blaggar only frowned in an owly way and put his head under his arm, weeping at the loss of his magnificent art gallery in the old oak on the edge of Caliper Forest.
 
       -     -       -        -          -       -      -      -

A huge castle lumbers past the burning trees. Somewhere within a man with bird wings watches Glen set the fire. He picks a hanging crystal from those arranged above his crystal ball and casts a spell, sending the crystal flying through space to land at the feet of Blaggar and Fortie.

"That's enough of a good deed for one day, I think. Ah, where's my lunch?"

A girl enters and drops a plate on his bed. "Stop eating in here."

He rolls his eyes and digs in.

[Brentai]

In an unspecified location, somebody did something that had nothing to do with anything else.

[Guild]

Kate decided that wasn't going to cut it. She pointed to the map above her hideout war table and made the location specific. "This is the location. The event had nothing to do with our current problem: Who is setting all these fires?" She put her hands behind her back and rocked on her heels and toes, waiting for a response from those she'd gathered here. Outside the Washington Monument's secret KateBase bay window a bus of tourists stopped to take pictures.

X looked around the room. Beside an onion knight named Pico Fermie Bagels stood an anthropomorphic left-handed coffee mug named Neven. Others may or may not have been in attendance. X had a hard time caring.

Neven turned around and used the face on the other side of his body to address Kate.

"What's that got to do with us?"

Kate sighed and tapped the map again. "If it didn't have anything to do with you, you wouldn't be here."

Unable to find a flaw in that logic, Neven swapped faces again.

"How did-" Pico Fermie Bagels started to inquire about some past detail of plot.

"That's not important."

"What does any of this have to do with Billy and Kelly?" Neven looked puzzled as he again switched sides.

"That's not important." Kate radiated authority on this matter.

X finally spoke. "Then what, oh fearless leader, is?"

"What is important is that my map is on fire." Kate nodded and smiled in a self-satisfied way.

Everyone looked. Kate did a doubletake.

"HEY! MY MAP IS ON FIRE! SOMEONE IS IN A LOT OF TROUBLE!" As she patted out the fire in the area marked "Caliper Forest" she continued to bitch loudly, saying, "Do you know how hard it is to get a map of this place? Ever since the dimensional merger map-makers have become fucking RICH, they charged me an arm and a leg for this one!"

[McDohl]

As abruptly as the fire started in Caliper Forest, it was doused.

Blaggar and Fortie were summarily confused, because the wooden skyscraper had been reduced to a smashed pile of rubble.

"Sowhatdowedonow?" asked Fortie.

"Well, some crazy person with a nifty electroluminescent sword and watch just immolated my life's work.  I'm hittin' the pub."

The owl got drunk.

---

Kate looked around.  "So, if none of you did that, then who did?"

"SUPRISE, COCKFAGS!"

(insert image of CoH Girard, cuz' I couldn't find him)

X trained his arm cannon on Girard's head and fired, but Girard was quicker, and moved out of the way.  Parts of the Washington Monument were blasted away and fell on tourists.

George W. Bush went on a press conference and blamed al-Qaeda and Katrina.

Girard cackled as he and X continued their duel in Kate's new war room for a few more minutes, before Girard pirouetted and vanished, leaving behind a note.

The anthropomorphised coffee cup looked around.

"What the fuck just happened?"

Everyone else thought the same thing.

Meanwhile, Guildenstern 'd.

[Guild]

Glenn saluted as Girard paced back and forth in the oval office. George W. Bush sat not far off, playing with a rubik's cube. He'd finally managed to smash it apart with a gavel and was trying to put the 27 pieces back together.

"Are you sure you set enough fires?" Girard looked anxious and angry.

Glenn nodded.

"Go downstairs and see if Billy and Kelly are dead yet."

Glenn walked away, the slave-crown on his head whirring quietly.

George W. Bush finally reassembled the cube. It was more mixed up than before he'd started. He frowned and smashed it with the gavel again.

[McDohl]

They called me insane.  Paranoid.  An abuser of power.  They're all fools!  All of them!  BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

"Mr. Vice President?"

Dick Cheney turned slowly in his tall, black leather swivel chair, fingers steepled.  "Yes?"

The aide shivered in his shoes, his tie clip beginning to *click click click* against one of the buttons of his shirt.  Cheney was a man not to be trifled with.

"The, er, the Senate has voted to shut down your White House Defense Systems plan..."

Cheney's hands dropped.  He glared at the aide from over the desk.   "Go on."

A bead of sweat ran down the side of the aide's face as he continued.  "Reviewing the plan that 'whirling masses of saw blades beneath a narrow bridge being the only ability to access your secret underground skull-shaped castle' is both impractical and insane."

Cheney stood up.  The aide flinched.

"They're all fools.  ALL OF THEM!"  He slammed a fist down on his desk, then turned to look out the window behind him out to the White House lawn.

"Then I'm afraid that some...reorganization is in order."  He snapped his fingers, and a secret door opened up in the wall.  The reanimated corpse of Donald Rumsfeld charged in, roaring and slavering, and devoured the aide whole.

As the splatter of gore behind him went ignored, Cheney thought to himself.

"The time has come to enact Program: Kitten."

[Guild]

Hideo's lab buzzed with activity. The American Children he'd enslaved with his videogame propaganda worked busily, using their wiretaps of Homeland Security and correlating data by the truckload.

Hideo himself stood atop a small balcony, surveiling his master plan.

"Sir!"

Hideo turned and looked the aide over.

"What."

The aide forged ahead. "Sir, our plan to disrupt Cheney's plan was a success. He'll be stymied for months."

"Excell-"

Girard appeared behind Hideo.

"Suck this, Kojima."

A short sword thrust through Hideo's work tux. The shining red blade dripped with his green blood.

"..."

Hideo dropped to the ground, dead.

Girard giggled and proceeded to slay the entire staff, starting with the youngest orphans and puppies.

[Thad]

Thump thump thump "MEOW!" rattle rattle rattle "MEW! ROWR!"

"GOD DAMN CAT!" Thad shouted.

[McDohl]

Back in DC, Cheney swished a carafe of red wine dracularly.

[Guild]

Kate's war-room butler served spicy nachos. Everyone ate happily for a few hours, peacefully contemplating the plan.

"So, what's the plan?" asked Pico Fermie Bagels after much contemplation.

"Er, I thought Kate had a plan." X idly flipped through a copy of "Playboy: Women of Congress" edition magazine.

Nobody seemed to have an answer for that.

"I WILL DEFEAT YOU WITH HONOR!" someone shouted from outside. Neven turned around to look and spoke out the other side of his head as he described the scene below.

It was Anticlimax, standing on the lawn of the Washington Monument in his underpants. In each hand he held a samurai sword and clutched another between his teeth. He had a fourth stuck behind one knee which forced him to hop around on one foot. Finally, a fifth sword tucked between his thighs provided quadrinary parrying as he valiantly fought off a hundred Ninja Gaiden ninjas.

"It's some dumbass with swords fighting Ninja Gaiden ninjas."

"That's our queue. Ready the cannons." Kate pointed to a cannon that had just appeared in the corner of the room."

"Don't you mean, 'that's our cue?'" X sniffed dryly.

"What did I say?"

"You said, 'queue.'"

"What?"

"You said, 'queue' and you meant, 'cue.'"

"I don't need lectures from someone who can't properly annotate quotes within quotes."

X took a deep breath and shook his head. "Nevermind." He walked over to the cannon and hefted it up onto his shoulders.

[Kazz]

Gok Tinnik paid a demon to let him fuck it in the ass, and somehow came out of the entire affair looking suave.

[Guild]

Blaggar hiccuped.

- - - - - - - -

Guildenstern sits at his desk, masturbating vigorously while eating a pastrami sandwich, scratching his butt and checking his emails. The Colbert Report plays in the background. Suddenly he stops all movement.

"Hey! Stop spying on me! And you guys need to add to this story."

He turns to face the screen. "I mean it. Go away."

He sits for a second, penis turning flaccid in his hand. A fly lands on the pastrami sandwich. He ignores it.

"Goddamnit!" He stands and storms outside to smoke a cigarette, not noticing that his wang is still hanging out. An old lady waves at him and he cocks his head in reply, mumbling something about wishing Thad would share the booze.

- - - - - - - - - -

"WellthisisthelifehuhBlaggarmyboy?" Fortie chowed down on another of his private reserve of finely malted acorns.

"Hoot." Blaggar's voice dripped with owly sarcasm.

"Hic."

"Hic."

*SLAM* Blaggar's mug splashed with the force of his angry gesture. "THAT'S IT! I'm going to do something about this. We need to call HIM."

Fortie pretended not to hear. "Andanotherthing, atleastyou'vegotyourhealth!"

"I said, we need to call Miles Prower."

"..." Fortie rubbed a bulbous eye and spit up a bit of shell. He slowly stood up, wavered a bit on his hind legs, and walked slowly to the pub door.

"FORTIE GET BACK HERE!" Blaggar sobered enough to menace the smaller squirrel, who turned and shook his head vehemently.

"Youknowthatistheworstideayou'veeverhad, right? Thereareotherheroeswecouldcall... Chaoscomestomind."

"Prower." Blaggar's bloodshot eyes bespoke a lapse in judgement that would cast a shadow of ominous portent on the entire rest of the story.

In a corner of the pub an eavesdropping Chao died of heart failure.

[Thad]

"N-n-n-nicesuityou'vegotthere."  Fortie was very nervous.  "Ar-Armani?"

Prower gave a kind of toothy smirk around his cigar.  "Stop kissing my ass and get to the point, boys," he said through clenched teeth, his stogie bouncing rhythmically.

"You know exactly why we're here," Blaggar snapped.

"The Overlanders burn our forests and poison our air," Prower responded.  "So it has always been.  So it will always be."

"You're-you'repoisoningtheairrightnow!" Fortie coughed, indicating the smoke from Prower's cigar.

"Exactly," the fox responded.  "I'm sick of the dance."

"Then end it!" Blaggar urged.  "You can do what nobody else can.  You know more about asymmetric warfare than anyone on this planet."

"This mess of a planet, this Dark Age of a time," Prower responded.  "Yes.  These Overlanders, scurrying around in fear of an ape in a cave.  I've met fifteen-year-olds who knew more about how to dismantle a city."

"That's why we need you!"

"Don't you see, damn it?" Prower snarled.  "It didn't change a god-damned thing.  Twelve hundred years in the past and technology's more primitive but the song remains the same.  I can't help this ugly little world.  Blowing up a few buildings isn't going to stop the march of 'progress'.  This is what Overlanders DO."

"It wasn't an Overlander," Blaggar responded.  "I saw him.  He was a frog."

Prower furrowed his brow.  Slowly, he removed the cigar from his mouth and stubbed it out in an ashtray.

"Turning on his own kind," he muttered.  "Yeah, all right, that makes it personal.  I'm in."

[Brentai]

And then the world

"No," said X.

What?  Come on, just one

"No," said X.

Just a little

"No," said X.



Not even a

"No," said X.

Aw, fine.

----------------------------------------

Prower put his ear to the ground, brow still furrowed.  He stayed that way for 10 whole minutes.  And then 5 more.

"Whatareyoudoing?" Fortie finally asked.

"Don't be so fucking impatient!!!" Prower yelled, rising briefly to address the squirrel, then put his ear to the ground.  Another 20 minutes passed.

"Listeningforwha-"

"SHUT UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP!!!!!  I'm listening for theme music."

"Thememu..."  Prower started to move, then stopped as Fortie did, "Imean... thememusic?"

"Yessss..." Prower hissed, "From your description, I am certain the perp has a... leitmotif, of a sort.  Sort of a Daaaah naa naa NAA... or a Woooo WOOOO woooooooo..."

"Ho!" Blaggar chimed in, "I get it, something like a... hoo hoohoohooHOO hoo HOO hoo, hoo hoo..."

"What was that?!?!?!"  Prower had leapt up and spun around on one foot (in one fluid motion) to face the bird.  "What was that... just now?"

Blaggar doubled back in surprised.  "I uh, I guess it was like... hoo hoohoohooHOO hoo HOO hoo, hoo hoo..."

"YOU IDIOT!!!" Prower burst out, stepping forward angrily and causing the other two animals to double back a few paces.  "You thrice-damned fools!  We're not looking for a frog!  We're looking for... for..."  Prower stared off into the distance for a moment, "Him."

It was silent for about 30 minutes.  Then.  "Himwho?"

Prower turned his back to the pair and narrowed his eyes.  Despite the fact that he wasn't facing them, they were well aware that he was narrowing his eyes.

"Him."  Prower rolled up his left sleeve to reveal his naked wrist.

"The one who stole my watch."

[Guild]

Aniticlimax completed a spectacular triple-triple-triple double-gator flip and pounded the ground, sending cracks radiating from his blades like rapidly-growing cancer. Ninjas fell in by the dozens to be consumed in the earth's magma. The shockwave swept the rest off the lawn and over several buildings. He gained two experience and one AP.

[Brentai]

Sometimes, X had very long flashbacks.

----------------------------------------

"Part of me wants to ask why you're doing this," X said, "And part of me wants to know why you didn't do this years ago."

"You know what the cool thing about that is?  You can actually answer each question with the other one."

X shook his head.  That boy always did have a cheeky answer like that.

Not that Hedgehog X was so much of a boy anymore.  When he was born, he was physiologically 12 years old - a caveat that made sense at the time, since the choices were either that, or have to grow from an embryo in time to stop whatever vague threat he had been created to oppose.  The problem was, he was stuck that way... still a 12 year old, anthropomorphic boy, housing the mind and spirit of an increasingly embittered, cranky, and crusty old world-weary traveler.  It didn't help that he had been turned into, among other things, an incredibly bipolar robot and a singing candy machine, nor that he had been blown up, murdered, tortured, and forced to adjust his world view a comically routine number of times.

Things had gotten worse for him when, a few years ago, he realized that he was actually older than 12 years old now, and that his body was actively trapping him in a regressed state.  And most recently, he passed 18 years of age.  Hedgehog X was actually an adult, chronologically, but still couldn't reach things off the top shelf without a chair.  And his voice still cracked every once in a while.

Besides, Katestory was over.  Done with.  Finished.  Anything written afterwards would simply not count, as far as Hedgehog X was concerned.  And frankly, he himself was beginning to become something of an embarrassment.

In short, it was time for Hedgehog X to retire.

"Okay, yes, fine," X said, wishing he hadn't asked, "But why this thing where I have to have some sort of flashback to you every time there's a new chapter?"

"Oh, that's obvious isn't it?  Because I'm in every one of these."

Hedgehog X turned and waved his hand lazily in the air.  "See ya," he said, and got on the gray ship.

As X watched his friend sail away, beyond all possible realities and conclusions.  As he watched, Hedgehog X turned for the briefest moment.

He smiled one of those infuriating smiles, and never looked back again.



Then X suddenly realized something.

"HEDGEHOG X!" he shouted.  No answer.

"HEDGEHOG X!"

"...YOU WEREN'T IN BOOK ELEVEN!"

There was a long pause.  X heard him shout "Oh for the love of fuck!" before disappearing into the mists.

----------------------------------------

"He'll probably be back anyway one of these days," X said to himself, smiling.  "Better enjoy it while it lasts."

[Guild]

The ship promptly exploded into a Bose-Einstein waveform. Several passengers were alarmed, but the quantum vibrations that the crew had become soothed them on a case-by-case basis, assuring them that everything was as normal for the ship as possible. X noted that his Bose Wave Radio sounded slightly tinny for the interim.

All right stop
Collaborate and listen
Ice is back with my brand new invention
Something grabs a hold of me tightly
Flowin like a harpoon daily and nightly
Will it ever stop?
Yo--I don't know
Turn off the lights and I'll glow
To the extreme I rock a mic like a vandal
Light up a stage and wax a chump like a candle.

[Thad]

Prower's ears twitched.

"It's him."

"Who?" asked Blaggar.

"I know this frog."

"Yousaidweweren'tlookingforafrog," Fortie said.

"We're not.  He's a pawn.  But damn -- a strong one.  This was going to be bad enough just because he had my watch.  But he's got a lot more than that to throw at us."

"Like what?" asked Blaggar.

"Magic sword, water spells...and have you ever heard of Frog Stomp?  The more we beat him up the stronger he'll get.  We need to take him down hard, fast, and without giving him a chance to hurt us.  ...Damn.  No choice, then.  He knew.  He knew this was going to happen."

"Who?" asked Blaggar.

----------------------------------------

Sometimes, Prower had very long flashbacks.

----------------------------------------

He was wiping down the grubby bar when he heard the door open.  Funny, he could have sworn he'd locked it.

"We're closed," he snarled, without looking up.  "We close at two.  We don't want any more visitors, customers, or fat, drunk barflies."

"What about very old friends?"

Miles stopped wiping and looked up.

A purple hedgehog stood in the doorway of the Two-Tailed Fox Nightclub.  He was carrying a bindle over his shoulder.

Miles's snarl increased.  "You."

"Me," acknowledged Hedgehog X, almost apologetically.

Miles went back to rubbing, faster this time.  "I'm retired."

"Don't tell X," Hedgehog X said with a smirk.  "Actually, I'm just on my way to see him.  You see, you've got it wrong.  I'M the one who's retiring.  You?  You don't get to retire."

Prower threw his rag in Hedgehog X's face.  "No.  No no no no no.  You want out?  Great.  One child soldier to another, we've earned a nice quiet life.  WE'VE earned a nice quiet life.  Don't drag me back into it just because you want out."

Hedgehog X shook the rag off his face.  "Not my choice," he responded.  "It's never been my choice.  We're puppets, Tails."

"Don't call me that!"

Hedgehog X unwrapped his bindle.

"No.  Not doing this," Prower continued to protest.

"I believe you've met my mom and dad," Hedgehog X said.  "And my mom and dad, and my mom and dad.  And...well, there are seven of them, so I can't really say 'my mom and dad' for the last one, but you get the idea."

"I won't take them!"

"You don't have a choice.  I'm sorry."

----------------------------------------

"Damn," said Prower.  "No choice, then.  He knew.  He knew this was going to happen."

----------------------------------------

TAILS HAS ALL THE SUPER EMERALDS
NOW TAILS CAN CHANGE INTO SUPER TAILS

----------------------------------------

Prower jumped into the air.  He began to glow bright yellow.  Fortie and Blaggar flanked him, as they started to glow too.  A third woodland creature -- let's say a Flicky -- flew in to complete the set.

They tore across the waste in the direction of the theme music.

"HE'S GOT A CROWN ON HIS HEAD," Prower shouted as they approached.  "AIM FOR THE CROWN, AIM FOR THE CROWN!"

"Gribbit," said Frog.

[Brentai]

Sometimes, Anticlimax had very short flashbacks.

----------------------------------------

Hedgehog X picked his nose.

----------------------------------------

"I know what I must do now," Anticlimax said, and got up off the couch.