Reality is a Harsh Mistress/Chapter 3
From Homestar Runner Fanstuff Wiki
Tristan Strong's Litany of Crushed Hopes and Dreams
Subject: Lotsa Weirdness
posted at 3:42pm
current mood: Puzzled
current tunes: Pink Floyd - Goodbye Blue Sky
A lot of weird stuff has been happening today. For one thing, Dan and that Victor guy have been hanging out together even though they hate each other. Well, Dan hates Victor. I thought they were planning another robbery so I told Dan I wasn't bailing him out again, but he just looked confused.
But that's not the most unusual thing. Dan called me Strong Sad and said I had elephant feet earlier, which is pretty much normal for him. But since then I keep thinking he's right, and I do have soolnds. That's they should be called. Elephant feet sounds so insulting. Oh, sorry about that. So anyway, I guess I've just lost it. Yeah, that's probably it.
In other news, I have a broken nose.
The Cheat adjusted his cap so that his black eye was less visible, then rang the doorbell to his second home. He was instantly tackled by a purple blur.
"THE CHEAT!" said Carlos, hugging The Cheat tightly.
"Hey, big guy," said The Cheat.
He squirmed a little.
"You're crushing my ribs," he added.
"UUUH?" said Carlos, but put The Cheat back down.
The Cheat showed Carlos the boxing gloves he was holding.
"I need to give your brother these," he said. "Don't know why."
Probably a boxing scam, he thought, as he and Carlos entered the basement. The Cheat glanced around the room in case anything had been stolen, but everything looked normal, except for the guy who was lying on the ground and crying. The Cheat recognised him as Victor, an idiot he ripped off sometimes. What he was doing there, The Cheat didn't know. Dan was sitting on the couch, playing a video game from the previous decade.
"Hey man," said The Cheat. "I brought those gloves you wanted. Took me a while to find the right colour."
Dan glanced around and dropped the controller.
"Now that's what I'm talking about!" he said, grabbing the gloves and putting them on. "That's much better!"
"WHA?" said Carlos.
The Cheat shrugged. So it was just Dan being weird, like everyone else in Free Country. Happened all the time.
"I mean, I would've preferred red over purple, but—" began Dan, then did a double take. "Whoa! The Cheat! You're a little kid!"
That, on the other hand, did not happen all the time.
"I've been twelve all year, stupid," said The Cheat. "What's up with you today?"
Dan looked irritated at being addressed as "stupid", but what was he going to do? Hit him? The Cheat braced himself just in case.
"Uh, The Cheat," said Dan instead, rubbing the back of his head. "I gotta tell you someth—"
"My funny! Where are you?" interrupted Victor suddenly.
The Cheat glanced at him, then looked back at Dan.
"Shut up, Homestar!" said Dan. "I'm talking to my main The Cheat here."
"Will you find my funny, The Cheat like kid?" said Victor, falling to his knees in front of The Cheat.
"You were never funny!" said The Cheat, leaning back. "Now get away from me!"
Victor looked at The Cheat in confusion.
"Oh. Right," he said, calming down slightly. "I forgot."
"Dan, what's he doing here?" said The Cheat. He glanced at the TV. "You're getting owned by Moblins."
Dan quickly hit pause.
"Those are Wizzrobes!" he said. "Guy wouldn't know an Octorok from a Stalfos if..."
"Didn't you have something to tell me?" interrupted The Cheat.
"Oh, yeah," said Dan. "Well, The Cheat, it's a long story..."
Dan talked for fifteen minutes straight. The Cheat tried to look like he was paying attention. Victor took a nap behind the couch.
"Right, sure," said The Cheat when Dan had finished. He waved a hand dismissively.
"I can't make this stuff up!" said Dan. "Well, I guess I can, but... It's true, okay? Take a look."
Dan scribbled on a Post-It note and gave it to The Cheat, who inspected it. Dan's drawing depicted a big guy with a face in the middle of his chest, a shorter guy with boxing gloves on and a head the size of his body, and a little spotted thing. It was captioned with the word "us". There was also some sort of armless and heavily injured creature on the ground, which was captioned "dumbstar".
"Which one's supposed to be me?" said The Cheat, looking at it upside down. "The headless dude?"
"This little guy," said Dan, indicating the spotted thing with his thumb. "C'mon, The Cheat! Don't you remember the time when we gave Coach Z sour cream and The Cheat hair, and we told him it was icecream?"
"No," said The Cheat. "Do you remember the time we stole most of Bubs' stock and sold it back to him at double the price?"
"Uh... No," said Dan. "Wait. Bubs is here? And he's called Bubs?"
The Cheat rolled his eyes. He was worried about Dan. He didn't believe his story about their being cartoon characters, but it seemed like he'd lost his memory somehow. Maybe he'd hit his head or something.
"Yeah, Bubs exists," he said. "He sold you those boots!"
Dan looked down.
"I didn't get these boots from Bubs!" he said. "These are my boots!"
"Which you got from Bubs," said The Cheat.
"No, I mean these are my boots!" insisted Dan. "I was born with these boots, man!"
"It's true!" said Victor, sitting up suddenly.
"No. You weren't," said The Cheat.
Dan opened his mouth, then shook his head.
"Never mind!" he said. "Uh... Hey The Cheat, do you think your computer knows something?"
The Cheat took a second to translate Dan's words from gibberish to English.
"So you... wanna look at my flash cartoons?" he guessed.
"Uh... why not?" said Dan. "Gotta look at all the... plausibilities. Or something. Hey, Homestar!"
Victor saluted.
"Co-lo-nel Homestar Runner reporting for duty!" he said.
"You go... detect everyone I hate," said Dan.
"Yes, sir!" said Victor, running out of the room.
The Cheat stared at Dan, then at Carlos, who'd been inspecting his fingernails for the past twenty minutes. He wondered if Carlos knew the number of the local insane asylum.
"My computer's up this way," said The Cheat after a few seconds. He led the way out of the basement. "Remember? You let me keep it here 'cause otherwise my stepdad would sell it?"
"No, I let you keep it here because it wouldn't fit in the King of Town's grill," said Dan. "Remember?"
"Whatever you say, Senor Loco," muttered The Cheat, entering his computer room. Which was also the laundry room.
Dan muttered something under his breath.
The Cheat brought his prized computer, Tangerine Dreams, out of stand-by, and opened his flash movies folder. Then he opened the These Peoples Try To Fade Me video he'd made for Coach Z a while back. Coach Z had liked it, at least.
Bright colours filled the screen, and Coach Z's speech impediment filled the air.
"Hey, I remember this!" said Dan after a minute or two. "Only Coach Z has a mouth... And more hair."
"Cool, isn't it?" said The Cheat.
"No."
The Cheat closed the cartoon with a sigh, and opened another that he was very proud of. Dan had said this one was good. Kind of.
"I did the voices for this one," he said.
"PURE GENIUS!" said Carlos.
"Hey Dan! I need to be kicked in the face," said the cartoon Victor.
"I can do it! I will do it nine times," said the cartoon Dan.
"Uh, yeah," said the real Dan. "I think your voice acting needs some... good voice acting."
"What are you talking about?" said The Cheat. "It sounds just like you!"
"If by "me" you mean "A vole with acute laryngitis," then yeah. It does sound like me," said Dan. "So... If you barely know Homestar here, why'd you put him in your cartoon?"
The Cheat assumed he meant Victor.
"I dunno," he said. "It was funny?"
"And why am I—" said Dan.
"Shut up, this is my favourite part," said The Cheat suddenly.
"Don't you sass me!" snapped Dan, but he did shut up.
"Three trophies for The Cheat!" said the cartoon versions of Dan, Victor and Coach Z.
"The Cheat, this is the greatest cartoon in the whole world! Have a trophy!" said another cartoon Dan.
"Thanks, man!" said the cartoon The Cheat.
The movie ended.
"Uh... what happened to Eh! Steve?" said Dan.
"A what?" said the Cheat.
"Oh, never mind!" said Dan, running a finger through his hair. "Look, The Cheat. You wanna do good voicing acting, you gotta do it like this;" he spoke in a falsetto, "I have a crush on every boy!"
"Oh, yeah," said The Cheat. "Your comic thing. I converted one of them into a Flash cartoon too. Remember that?"
"You mean Teen Girl Squad?" said Dan. "Yeah, I remember..."
"I think it turned out real good— Dan? Something wrong?"
Dan had started holding his throat and coughing uncontrollably. Carlos slapped him on the back, knocking him into the wall.
"Uh, thanks Strong Mad," said Dan, slightly muffledly. He stood up. "I just made out with Cheerleader!"
"You made out with a figment of your imagination?" said The Cheat, shifting his chair away slightly.
"No... Yes..." said Dan. "I-I, she was at practice today, but she said her name was Jennifer!"
"So she was some girl named Jennifer you thought was Cheerleader," said The Cheat. "Chill."
Dan didn't chill.
"You don't understand..." he mumbled, bashing his head on the keyboard a couple of times.
"Hey!" said The Cheat, irritated by Dan's ramblings. He glanced at the movie that had been highlighted by Dan's keyboard abuse, which was titled sbemail87.swf. He didn't remember making it, watching it, or even naming it. "You seen this before? Where're sbemails 1 through 86?"
"Sbemail?!" said Dan, looking up quickly.
"Yeah, sbemail87," said The Cheat. "You've heard of it?"
"Let me see that!" said Dan, grabbing the mouse and clicking on the movie.
The Cheat guessed he'd forgotten about Cheerleader now. The movie started.
"Who's that?" asked The Cheat.
It looked a little like the boxing gloves guy Dan had drawn on the Post-It note.
"Hey, that's me!" said Dan excitedly. "And I'm checkin' my email! Kinda."
The Cheat stared. He did kind of remember doing something like this. He would've thought that he'd dreamed it, if he'd ever had a good night's sleep since seeing that one documentary. It was very familiar, though. Very very familiar.
Suddenly The Cheat wasn't sitting on his chair. He was standing on it. He glanced to the left, then the right. Dan, who'd apparently turned into the boxing gloves guy, was still watching the cartoon, and didn't seem to have noticed anything wrong. He tried to talk, but it came out as "Ammamingning, marramo!"
The Cheat began to panic.
"Mirri obasi mirra oh? Merrahoh! Herri ahoh!"
And then everything returned to normal, and Dan was looking at him with something almost like concern.
"Whoa! The Cheat!" he said. "Cool out on the seizures!"
"Mehra ke—" began The Cheat, then shook his head violently and tried to speak again. "Didn't you see that?"
"See what?" said Dan. "Your crappy email?"
"I worked hard on that!" said The Cheat without thinking.
"Oh, I thought you couldn't remember it!" said Dan sarcastically.
"I didn't..." said The Cheat, then noticed that the background noise of his cartoon had stopped. "Mah?"
The movie had closed itself somehow, so The Cheat examined the folder it had been in. It had vanished. The Cheat stared at the screen blankly for a second. He was remembering a lot of things that hadn't happened. Things like making that cartoon...
The Cheat was animating the scene with Bubs when Strong Bad came up behind him.
"Hey The Cheat," he said. "I need you to go spraypaint Trogdor onto Strong Sad again."
The memory ended abruptly halfway through The Cheat's reply, but it did match what Dan had told him perfectly. Great. Now he was crazy too.
"I guess I believe you now, Strong Bad," said The Cheat carefully. He didn't want to overexcite the crazy man.
"Whoa. You do?" said Dan. "I thought it would take way more dollars and pleading than that."
The Cheat shrugged. He didn't really want to talk his hallucination-or-whatever-it-was to Dan. Or all the other stuff he was suddenly remembering. Lightswitch raves? Some noise that a stool made becoming a celebrity? That was almost as crazy as anything Dan had told him, but he felt it was true. He tried to think.
"Guess I should show you around or something," he said.
"What for?" said Dan, slapping the computer. "This computer is obviously hiding something."
"Computers can't think," said The Cheat.
At least, they couldn't here.
"Really? Are you sure?"
"Yes!"
"Well, that sucks," said Dan. "What if you need a girlfriend and all the ladytypes think you're a... Not that that's ever happened to me. That was just hypothetical. Nope, all the ladies still want a piece of me."
"Sure..." said The Cheat, who'd seen his friend trying to pick up girls.
Dan kicked him in the shin.
"Ow!" said The Cheat, rubbing his leg. "What'd you do that for?"
"I dunno," said Dan. "It's kinda what I do."
"You are crazy," reiterated The Cheat, but he wasn't so sure anymore.
Author's Notes
- Homestar's name is a fairly obvious pun. Unfortunately the name doesn't fit his personality very well, but I couldn't think of anything better. Sorry.
- Strong Bad was playing a Zelda game. Probably A Link To The Past. I considered having him play Stinkoman 20X6, but it felt weird to write him knowing what Poorbts and Downtants were. So I didn't.
- It was really hard to choose a song that I thought Strong Sad would like. Hopefully I got it right. I like that song, anyway.
