Barks and Bytes - A Sonic Boom Story

Chapter 11 - The Legacy

After six long weeks have passed since the massive battle with Terra, followed by the restoration of Blades of the Rebellion and every other computer game (as all gamers needed to do was to delete Optimizing Omelette, apparently without my antidote), there came the annual Most Dangerous Game Awards ceremony, hosted by none other than Mayor Fink. During this event, game developers were given awards for achieving the best in a category for their games, whether AAA or indie. Like in those Awardy Awards (Which Sticks won long ago), we were all to wear formal clothes, even us developers:

For my current friends outside the red carpet, Sonic, wore a penguin-like tuxedo and bow tie of his own color, Amy wore a purple strapless derby dress with a sparkly texture, long white gloves, pink bracelets, and red low-heeled shoes, and Sticks wore a modified version of her black one-shoulder dress (After she had destroyed her first attire from her first ceremony) with similar white hemlines and black medium-heeled shoes, but this time, with the addition of platinum tiger stripes, to go with her wild personality. But where was Knuckles? He said that he had a job...

As for my girlfriend Zooey, she wore the same rainbow necklace I gave her, as well as a similarly colorful dress full of feathers, beads and glitter, upon her love towards rainbows.

And for me and my crew of Freakware, walking on the carpet, Willabelle wore a complex, cream-colored kimono-like dress, with wide sleeves, flowers, hearts bow ties, and layers of different colors (Sort of forgot what colors they were...), Mic was portrayed as a Welsh guard with that funny tall and fluffy black hat, Tim and Tom Two-Heads simply wore neckties (green for Tim, orange for Tom), Fingers was wearing a brown tuxedo he referred as a "monkey suit" (No jokes about it, please), and finally, I wore a gold Stewart Hughes Diamond Edition (No, I'm not kidding, I really did buy it from a luxury store, with a massive "hero's discount!"), for being the guest of honor.

"Hold it!" ordered Knuckles (wearing the same tuxedo Sonic wore and his security badge, for the third time), inspecting me and my crew with his metal-detecting wand. After a half a minute, he declared, "You're all clean! Just making sure that no one's bringing pepper spray or a potion turning people into monsters."

While my crew chuckled, I was left a little annoyed. "I hope not." And then we continued walking, with my averting eyes.

Throughout the ceremony, each of the awards, whether they were for best visuals, indie, RPG, platformer, action, etc., were given to different games. For our game, while it was only nominated for the categories mentioned above, it received a certain award I haven't expected at all...

"And finally, it's what you've been waiting for," announced Mayor Fink, followed by a suspenseful drumroll. "This final award, for 'Game of the Year,' shall go to...BLADES OF THE REBELLION, produced by Freakware!"

While epic orchestra played, the whole audience gave a round of huge applause whereas my development team and I frolicked up the red stairs to the fancy stage where the mayor gave us the grand trophy, revealed to have miniature statuettes of me and my crew.

Fink shook all of our hands. "Congratulations, Freakware! You've came all the way to earn this!" Then, he pointed out to me, "And Tails, is there something you'd like to say about your part-time job of game making?"

"Oh, absolutely," I answered enthusiastically. So I announced on the microphone, "My and crew and I would like to thank everyone for bringing all of their support throughout time. We give grace to our all of our fans for supporting our fundraiser, building a loyal fandom, and helping us stop a crazy bully who wanted to destroy our precious dreams. I give grace to my crew for helping me cope with my childhood and make our game promoting equality among pals of different shapes and sizes. And last, but not least, we give grace to my very best friends, Sonic the Hedgehog, Amy Rose, Knuckles the Echidna, and Sticks the Badger, for being the vital inspirations for all the playable characters, Scion, Amoroso, Nucleus, and Bonnie Bones." I chuckled playfully, "And then, I am the inspiration of Horns..."