Loose Threads Episode 5- Missing Strings

Voltareon2012 · August 21

SONIC
Carrying Pikachu on his shoulder, Sonic boosts through the forest. “Man, doesn’t this place ever have an end?” Pikachu grips on for dear life. “Piiikachu!!!”
“Oh, sorry, can you not run this speed?! Welcome to the speed of sound, little buddy!” He suddenly bursts out of the trees and into a rocky desert. “Huh? Well, guess we’re out…” he notices a sign. It's written in another language, with English captions underneath. “Welcome to the Splatlands!”
“Pika?”
“I dunno what the Splatlands are, buddy. Guess it’s a zone around here. Then let’s go!” He takes off again, bursting through the area, kicking up sand everywhere before skidding into a city. It looks like it would be a bustling place, but nobody’s there. It's full of decorations. Sonic squints at another sign. “‘Splatfest in two days’?” He shrugs. “This place is weird. Wonder if we can find Tails or Knux or one of the others here…”
“Pika!”
“Oh, yeah, and any of your friends too?”
“Pika…” Pikachu cocks his head. Sonic lets him leap off his shoulder. “Do you not have anyone you know?”
“Pika.” Pikachu shakes his head.
“Were you just… alone in your world?”
Pikachu shrugs.
“Oh, wait… did you lose your memories? That happened to me once. Ended up in another dimension convinced I was ‘Mr. Needlemouse’.” Pikachu nods. Sonic wipes his nose. “Well, on the bright side, Chaos Control can restore memories too! I think. So once we get all seven, we can send you back to your world with your memories intact. I’m sure you have a friend waiting for you there.” Pikachu cheerily responds, “Piiika!” Sonic smirks. “Alright. But for now, let’s see if this ‘Splatfest’ is holding any of those Emeralds. I search the city; you pop in that elevator and search the building!” Sonic takes off in a blue blur to search the city.

BRAID
Braid quickly keeps gathering up more ink to spray at Cuphead, who constantly fires back sprays of little blue bullets. “Just give up, will ya?” he yells, firing out a sudden bursting blue attack. Braid rolls out of the way and tries to run him over with her Roller. He flattens out along the ground, then peels himself off and inflates back to normal. “You’re making this so much harder!”
“You can’t have that contract!” Braid hurls another bomb into his cup, but Cuphead’s ready for it this time, sucking it up into his straw, which abruptly melts into a cannon and shoots it back out. Braid parries it away and jumps into the ink puddle it made to gather more. “I get that it’s a matter of you and your brother’s lives, but… don’t you think Vee gets a chance to live, too? And the holders of the other sixteen?”
“It's for Mugsie!” Cuphead parries another bomb back at Braid, with his straw glowing pink.
“Vee’s fighting for her best friend!” Braid catches the bomb in a slosher and hurls it and a puddle of ink at Cuphead.
“It's us or her! Simple as that!” Cuphead’s feet become a nonsensical mess, and he runs away from Braid’s rapid-fire.
“That isn’t simple at all! Why should your life be worth more than hers?”
“It's not about me! I made the bet. Mugsie told me not to! Now he’s roped into this too!” Cuphead fires some green bullets that turn around to hit Braid as he runs away. Braid ducks into the ink on the ground to go under and swim up to him. Cuphead glances at the sky. “Huh?! Only...” he glances at his watch. “Just an hour?!”
“We’ve been fighting forever! Not to mention time seems to be moving fast here...”
“Ack... fine then!” He rushes at Braid. Braid cocks her Blaster, ready to blast him the second he gets too close, but he vanishes in a puff of smoke and reappears up above, whipping out a giant wooden mallet from his invisible back pocket and jumping off it, sending it flying down at Braid as he leaps after Vee, cocking a finger gun. “Alright, you darned fox-thing, hand it over!” Vee yelps. She glows with energy and becomes like a star. “LAST RESORT!” Cuphead goes flying into the sky. “WHOA-WHOA-WHOA!” He fires a burst of purple, bouncing bullets down at Vee. They bound along the rocky ground, becoming harder and harder to avoid as he fires more in the best places he can, pinning the Eevee in a mix of bounding purple bullets. Sparky tries to avoid them himself, still gripping the Pokedex in his mouth. Cuphead falls back down to the ground and starts to charge up a giant attack until Braid interrupts from behind by swinging the Inkbrush at him. Cuphead lurches forward, and the blast fires off anyway. Sparky yelps and tries to zip his way to Vee, only to be blocked by a bouncy bullet. Braid rushes over as fast as she can. Vee tries to run.
Paf.
Cuphead holds the contract in his hand. “Number seventeen...”
Braid picks up Vee’s limp form, for once not minding the feeling of fur as she hugs it. “Wha... you just...”
Cuphead disappears in a burst of smoke, heading back toward the casino. Braid drops to her knees. Sparky drops the Pokedex from his mouth and nuzzles against Vee.

LUIGI
“Wah?” Luigi looks at the strange, limbless man’s contraption. It contains a gun that shoots plungers, a screaming white rabbit-like creature that never stops yelling “BWAH! BWAH! BWAH!” in a futile attempt to reach a clear glass full of carrot juice, attached to several other pieces that Luigi assumes end in breaking the door with the limbless man’s detached fist.
Rayman slaps the machine. “Alright, I just have to...” he uses his free hand to pour the carrot juice down the Rabbid’s throat. It stops for a moment, in what looks like pure bliss, before suddenly perking up and releasing the loudest fart Luigi had ever heard in his life. The Rabbid blasts across the castle floor, laughing manically to itself all the while, until the rope pulls it back, yanking another machine that pulls Rayman’s fist back and sends it flying with amazing power right at the door. Such force was behind it, that it even manages to make a light jittering noise from the door, which remains firmly shut. Louder is the noise of the limbless man swearing as he clutches his throbbing fist.
Poyo watches this all with great interest. The pink ball then swallows the Rabbid whole, with it screaming “BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH-” all the while. He suddenly obtains a suit that looks quite like one of those creatures. Instead of the normal ‘poyo’, he says joyfully, “Bwah!” Luigi stares in horror.
Rayman hisses through his teeth. “Alright, fine! Let’s find another way out.”
Luigi points shakily to the downstairs. “Asedatopabolo.”
“That doesn’t make an ounce of sense. I’m goin’ in.” Rayman heads into the downstairs door and kicks it open. Luigi watches in terror, expecting a Boo to come out and eat him. No boo emerges. Instead, a corrupted, evil looking Goomba creature leaps out, yelling “ÐęÃťĦçØðĘ!” In a corrupted Goomba voice. Rayman winds up and punches it away, turning it to comical dust and a cluster of corrupted red nonsense words. “Yo, Luigi, toss me my plunger gun. I might need it.” Luigi tosses the gun over, and Rayman cocks it. “Then in we go.”
Luigi follows cautiously, holding out the flashlight on his Poltergust G-00. “Mamma mia...”
Poyo follows with an abounding, cheery, “Bwaha!”
The unlikely crew venture deep into the dark castle. Luigi swings his flashlight from side to side, watching warily for Boos or more corrupted Goombas. Rayman leads the way, holding his plunger gun at the ready at any given moment. Poyo brings up the rear, unless he feels like jumping ahead, then he does so, before returning to the back with a cheery ‘bwah!’.
They come across a way further down. Luigi, cowering behind Rayman, explains.
“Asinapotopababolo.”
“Speak English!” Rayman then glances at Luigi. “Wait a minute, say that again.”
“Asinapotopababolo.”
Rayman reads the subtitles. “Oh, so this way can lead down either to a painting that transports one to a world of lava and death, or to a door that exits into the moat, which is usually drained.”
“Yahoo!”
“Awesome. Not sure when you turned those on, but those are super convenient.” They go further down, looking in the dark for more enemies. None come. They reach the door, and Rayman tries to open it. “Locked. ...let’s try that place full of lava and death you were talking about.”
“No-no-no! Waa! Atosobabo.”
“Find a painting of a bunch of bombs, back in the main room? Okay...”
The team heads upstairs, following Luigi’s directions to a room containing a giant painting, that, open closer inspection with the flashlight, in fact has a bunch of bombs with legs on it. Rayman cocks his floating head. “What are we supposed to do with THIS?”
Luigi runs at it. “Wahoo!”
“Wait what’re y-”
Luigi plummets into Bomb-omb Battlefield. “That’s-a so nice!” Rayman lands in a heap next to him, picking up his seperate limbs. “Is that... thing... supposed to be there?”
Luigi gasps in horror.
Rayman gasps at Luigi’s gasp.
Kirby cheerfully giggles.

FLOWEY
Back to the SAVE.
Again.
Wow, this thing really IS dangerous.
Flowey had been playing with the Emerald for what felt like the past five hours to him, but for everyone else, no time had passed. He tried smashing it, only for an explosion to envelop the entire world and turn it into a pile of gray dust. He’s tried absorbing its power, like he had with the seven SOULs. He wilted to a pathetic dead golden flower. He tried to see if the orange stuff had a reaction to it. It burst out everywhere and took over everything.
He’d tried just about everything he could think of. This time, he decided to just store it for later and wait for Cosmo’s return. He looked among the other things in the tree. Inside of it were science fiction spaceship-like corridors. He tries some of the rooms, but each seems to require a code. He looks up and notices a bulletin board. He picks a note off it, which reads, “Since we know you’ll forget, Sonic, the code is 1357”. Flowey crushes it in his vine and puts in the code, granting him access to a simple bedroom, littered with random junk, from empty bags of chips to the most disgusting pair of socks he’d ever seen. He examined the room carefully, only to come up empty.
“I guess at the least, it's a place to rest...” he tries some of the other doors with the same code. None work, but he does discover another room. It's clean and contains all sorts of technology. The bed, however, is one for a child- both because of the size and the cute pattern. More interesting to Flowey is the main room. A pilot's chair sits there, and the glass allows a view of the world outside. Flowey smiles to himself. This will surely have something usef-
“Flowey!”
Flowey jumps. He whips around to see the plant girl politely walking at a brisk pace, carrying a butterscotch pie on her hands. Flowey stares at it in horror. This girl just has to keep bringing in Asriel’s memories. First her voice, then calling him a buttercup, and now somehow bringing one of Toriel’s pies...
“Flowey?”
“What?!” Flowey snaps. Cosmo jumps back. Flowey regains his composure. “Golly, you scared me! I fazed out for a second there. How did you find... that?”
Cosmo cheerily replies, “My new friend found it in one of the flowers!”
“Your... new friend?”
A strange black creature wearing a gray cloak and white, horned helm of some sort steps out from behind her and bows in greeting before Cosmo scoops him up suddenly to match Flowey’s height. “I call him ‘little ghost’, because... well, that’s what he feels like! A little ghost!”
Flowey eyes the sharp, nail-like weapon on his back. “...maybe you ought to call him ‘Knight’. He seems like one.”
Cosmo considers this before hugging the strange creature. “No, I think I like Ghost better.”
While the knight does not seem to have much of a reaction to this, he doesn’t seem particularly uncomfortable with Cosmo’s consistent physical affection. Flowey taps his vine. “Well, how about you and him eat that pie? I’ll go... photosynthesize.”
“You don’t want any? The little ghost doesn’t eat, you can have so-.”
“NO!” Flowey’s face subconsciously reverts to his evil, angered face, before suddenly switching to Asriel’s, before finally settling. Flowey breathes. “I don’t need any, so let’s not waste it. It's all yours, then.”
Cosmo leaves without another word. Flowey curses to himself before mumbling in a voice that too heavily resembles his old self’s, “Goshdarnit, why are you doing this to me?”

NIA
Darkness plunges over her.
“Huh? What’s going on?” She looks around. “Frisky? Ralsei? Midna?” None of them answer. Her voice just echoes in the dark.
Suddenly she’s back in her cell. A cowering child, waiting to be freed. The door bursts open. Jinn extends a hand. Nia accepts.
Dromarch, comforting her.
Rex, telling her she just needs to believe in herself, because he does.
What if I undid it all?
Nia freezes at the voice. It booms through her mind. She sees everything undone. “NO! STOP IT! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! REX!” She clutches at the vision of Rex, only for him to vanish. She pounds the ground. She’s greeted with her Blade form. Only she’s also greeting her Driver form. Both are her. But she doesn’t know which one.
Abstract thoughts and nightmares keep running through her mind. “STOP!”
It doesn’t stop.

SONIC.EXE
Sonic.exe prowls through the darkened SM64 castle. He feels the strings in it, making it woven into existence. He reaches into his eye, grabbing one of the red dots floating about in it. It unravels into a red, corrupting string. He duplicates it and spreads it among the castle. Goombas, corrupted with red, glitchy code, wander the halls, searching for anything to pull the string out of. He reaches in and pulls out another.
“TeŁl Mę, WoRłD mÄcHįNe, WhËrE ãRe ThĘy?”
The glitching string guides him toward the painting. He rips out another string. “TiMe FøR yÔuR PuRpOse.” He hurls the string inside, and steps back to watch the whole castle corrupt.