Sunshine. DCA801. Finally.

Dark: Isn't this where we came in? In an empty notepad?
Shade: ..holy crap. Dark's right. We're in an empty notepad. DJay's starting a new episode or something?
Dalek1: ACTUALLY.. HE IS STARTING A NEW SEASON.
[the Protagonists stare, wide-eyed, at the head Dalek]
Red: Seriously? A new season?
Dalek1: SERIOUSLY. A NEW SEASON.
Mp: Man, wait.. so.. what.. WHAT. What is going on?!
Red: *sigh* Kay, let's try and explain this.


nur8et rejgnsihshsh
gignihs
LAST TIME
ON
DCA

Welcome to the machine, Protagonists.
SHADOW- The New Main Protagonist? Trying to get seven green chaos drives so he can somehow stop the Veteran's Committee.
SHADE- The Old Main Protagonist? Dark/Swim chao. He's already saved the world, probably. Now he's Shadow's mentor.
RED- The Brains? Started off as a trickster, evolved into a strictly brains guy. Interested in the meta-show.
DARK- The Emotional Support? We're really not all too sure what Dark does. He's just there. Naive, sometimes brilliant.
WHITE- The Soldier? Adrian Ruthford, codename "Jack White." Rebel chao. Don't ask. Loyal as hell.
MECHA KNUCKLES- The Brawns? Created by Doctor Eggman but quickly scrapped. Just wants something to do. Lost without his boss.
THE TAILS DOLL- The Curse? Created by Doctor Eggman, quickly scrapped. Demonic? Wants something to do. Insecure, hides it.
MEPHILES- The Reluctant Hero? Claimed to be a one-shot, wants something to do. Demonic. Kinda new around these parts.
FUTURE SHADE- The Veteran? Shade, but thirty years older. He's the old guy who doesn't want the show to end, either.

Enjoy the show, villains.
THE VETERAN'S COMMITTEE- The New Main Antagonists? Twelve (formerly twelve?) characters with motives to end the show.
) DOCTOR EGGMAN- New to the Committee. Benevolent to the Protagonists.
) LEVITY NITE- Stereotypical cloaked figure. Ambiguous.
) ???- The head honcho. We know he's there. We just don't know who he is.
(Anyone else is unknown.)
THE BETA AVENGERS- The Old Main Antagonists? Context sensitive. Overall, an assembly of once-unused ideas. Returned.
) MILKMAN- Shawn the Dark, Shade's father. Usually benevolent. ..changed?
) JOE- Identity constantly changes. Either Cham, Metal Speedy, or Echo. Usually malevolent.
) ECHO- Cryptic and ancient chao beast. Usually ambiguous.
) TAGLIARE- The Boring One. Essentially a Sonic fancharacter.
) METAL SPEEDY- Thrown in jail. Rather devious mastermind. Cyber chao. Don't ask.
(Prolly more.)

Apollo I: The Writing Writer.
DJAY32- Jordan, Narrator, supposedly "Ulysses." Wrote DCA. It is now his way of escaping reality.

To make the plot as simple as possible, I want to end DCA. I think it might just help me be able to move on from.. things.
Yes, "things." Don't ask. But of course, the Protagonists don't want the show to end! So Shadow and I, we talked things
through. If he wants to save the show, he has to...
1: Stop the Veteran's Committee.
2: Stop the Beta Avengers.
3: Get the seven green chaos drives, for closure on one plot point.
4: Fix all the plot holes in the show, or at least most of them.
5: Convince me not to end the show. This is the hard part.
6: Stop IT, the substance that makes everything, from wiping a clean slate for my next story.

That's the story, morning glory.. now let's see what happens in the eighth season of...


Dark Chao Adventures
Season Eight: The Last Journey
Episode Eighty: Six Degrees of Progressive Darkness, DEGREE ONE: Sunshine (Can You Feel It?)


[the feature presentation begins in the Hero Garden]
[all is silent, all is deserted]
Chapter 1: ...In That Quiet Earth
[Shadow fades in]
[all is silent]
[Shadow's radio crackles; he answers it]
Shadow: Shadow here. I've made it to the Hero Garden.
ShadeRadio: Remember, kid. We'll gladly come with you if you need us.
Shadow: I can do this by myself. Really.
ShadeR: *sigh* ..okay.
[Shadow looks around]
[rustle rustle]
[Shadow looks, but sees nothing]
[he checks out the pool, behind the fountain, but nothing]
[he pulls out his radio]
Shadow: Are you guys sure there's a chaos drive here?
ShadeR: The Daleks say there's one, for sure.
[rustle]
Shadow: ..I'll keep looking. This place is starting to give me the creeps.
[Shadow looks s'more; he climbs a nearby tower and takes a look around from above]
[nothing!]
[Shadow tries his radio again]
Shadow: Shade?
ShadeR: You need our help?
Shadow: Well.. actually, that'd be ni--
ShadeR: WE'RE ON IT!
[Shade, Dark, and Red fade in]
Shade: HEYYYYY
Dark: We're finally gonna do stuff!
Red: So Shadow, what's the problem? You can't find the chaos drive?
Shadow: No, it's nowhere in sight.
Shade: Meh, you're just looking wrong. C'mon, guys. Let's show him how to really look.
[the others look but find nothing]
Red: ..uh, Shade? I think it's really not here.
[the camera takes the point-of-view of something in the skies, spotting Shadow]
Shade: Nonsense, of course it's here. It's gotta be.
[the camera starts flying towards Shadow]
Shadow: But then where would it be?
[it's approaching at an impressive rate]
[Dark spots it and points]
Dark: Maybe he knows?
[the others look; Shadow has no time to duck as it strikes him hard]
[the camera switches back to normal]
[Shadow is on the ground; he looks up and sees Echo, the purple Dark/Fly chao, covered in some dark substance]
Echo: KrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Shade: Echo! You crazy son of a.. YOU have the chaos drive, don't you?
Echo: NFFFFFFFFAAAaAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHH
Red: Shade, he seems to be in pain.
Shade: Yeah, and covered in some dark stuff. I don't trust him.
Echo: RUN. RUN, DAMMIT.
Shade: Oh, he's talking now. Why should we run, freak?
Echo: I'm not your freak, friend. Please.. RUN! The developments..
Shade: Oh, here we go with those "developments" again. Dammit, man. Don't you ever speak English?
Red: Uh.. Shade, maybe we SHOULD run.
Shade: Why? The chaos drive's supposed to be here.
Red: But Echo wouldn't tell us to run unless it was something lik--
Echo: RAAAGH.
[Echo is no longer covered in the substance]
Echo: RUN RUN RUN. RUN RUN RUN.
Shade: I ain't running.
Shadow: Neither am I.
[Shade and Shadow stand together, strong, ready to fight anything that comes their way]
[..except Echo, who charges into Shadow]
[Echo passes through him and runs away]
Shadow: ..wait. What.
Red: He's gone? Shadow, are you okay?
Shadow: fidfjeasf0afjiegsoni. WIwfj. nrwyds. ..d9kfadsvi. fd9as0ref. feijaodsgfjnfgowkdfjk.fidsgsggidsgicv
fd9vjs0kxcirjfeds
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efdvoaskc,3f9rewude384refdgjv98jr4efjd9icn9jv9j593rhjfhhadw9ch9ivhgtin3rtfevfn gughtujgfnegvot
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rewfd8-jvcj5 chaos drives

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help

Ulysses is lost at sea.

Ulysses is lost with me.

Ulysses is lost at sea.

Ulysses won't be back for tea.

I guess it's time to write.


Chapter 2: A Nightmare to Remember, movement two, "Beautiful Agony"
[Lying on the table in this unfamiliar place, Shadow is greeted by a stranger...]
[..a man without a face.]
[it is the slender man.]
[He says nothing, yet Shadow understands all.]
["Son, do you remember? Do you even know your name?"]
[Then he shined a branch onto Shadow's forehead.]
["Take this for the pain."]
[Hopelessly drifting, bathing in beautiful agony, Shadow is endlessly falling, lost in this wonderful misery...]
["Tell me, does this hurt you?"]
[the branch merged into Shadow's head]
["Can you move all of your fingers? Can you try your best to stand?"]
[Shadow asks about the others.]
Shadow: Is everyone okay?
["Don't worry."]
[The slender man turns and looks away.]
[In peaceful sedation, Shadow lays half awake.. and all of the panic inside starts to fade.]
[Hopelessly drifting, bathing in beautiful agony.]


Chapter 3: Keeping the Blade
[Shadow wakes up in the Dark Garden, coughing up blood]
[the other protagonists are gathered around him]
Mp: The kid's waking up. Give him some space, guys.
[Shadow tries his best to stand]
Shadow: ..I feel weak.
Shade: Yeah, uh.. turns out Echo did more to you than we first thought, man.
Shadow: What? What'd he do?
Dalek1: HE STOLE YOUR CHAOS DRIVES.
[the Daleks are also here; they decided to set up camp in the Dark Garden so the protagonists can easily reach them]
Shadow: He did WHAT?!
[Shadow stumbles; he is helped up by the others]
Dalek1: WE HAVE MORE PROBLEMS THAN EVEN I ORIGINALLY THOUGHT. NOT ONLY DID HE STEAL THEM, BUT HE IS ATTEMPTING TO GATHER THEM ALL FOR HIS OWN POWERS.
Shadow: But.. so... so I have to get seven chaos drives again?
MK: Hey, don't sweat it, kid! You've got us now! We can easily do this.
Shadow: Bah. Bahbfjiadscejifdcnu. I'm sick of adventuring, guys. Goddammit, I'm sick and tired and I just want to give up.
Dalek2: YOU CANNOT GIVE UP. YOU ARE THE MAIN PROTAGONIST.
Shadow: Fuck you, man. Why have I got to be the main protagonist? What will all this prove?
Red: ...guys, could I speak with him privately for a bit? I think I know what he's getting at.
[Red leads Shadow out of the Dark Garden and into the lobby]
Red: Shadow, I know what you're saying. There doesn't seem to be much point to our lives, does there?
Shadow: Saving the show won't do shit. We'd do more dead, remembered in retrospect, than alive and ignored.
Red: Well, you've got to remember that we aren't real creatures. We're all words on a computer screen. We exist to provide DJay with escapism.
Shadow: Does he really fucking NEED the escapism? His life is improving!
Red: That's what you think. He's been lost. Confused. Stressed and abused.
Shadow: Not recently.
Red: Yes, recently.
Shadow: ..he has other stories.
Red: None of them give him the same feeling as writing DCA. We need him to realize this. With DCA, he has familiar characters who are also blank slates.
Shadow: He's abusing US. This isn't how you treat your chao. You don't keep them locked away in your head, putting empty shells of them in stories.
Red: Shadow, we're dead.
Shadow: We didn't die, though! His brother deleted us. We're trapped in the eternal nothingness of fucking fesjadfsngfd, goddamn philosophy.
Red: For all intents and purposes, we are dead. We don't have feelings anymore.
Shadow: How can you say that?!
Red: I can say it because I am self-aware. We're just DJay's imagination. He seriously needs help. OUR help.
Shadow: He needs far more than OUR help, Red.
Red: But he's not getting that. So we need to do all we can. We need to fix him.
Shadow: He's not seriously thinking of ending DCA, and you know it.
Red: The scary part is, as right as you are, he's close to unintentionally putting it on indefinite hiatus.
Shadow: ...fuck.
Red: The bad guys all know this, no doubt. They want to end the show to mercy-kill it.
Shadow: And what do WE want, then?
Red: We either want a mercy-killing or for at least this grand adventure to end.
Shadow: This journey has become a monster of a story...
Red: Exactly. It's spanning two seasons now; even Echo thinks it has gone on long enough, so he's clearly trying to get the drives, himself.
Shadow: How does this story affect DJay?
Red: He isn't exactly encouraged to work on it when he knows he's got tons of plot points to wrap up.
Shadow: ...oh.. so he's tempted to just shut it down and leave us here.
Red: This is why you can't give up, Shadow.
Shadow: Fucking shit. Fuck fuck fuck fuck shit fuck. This is crazy. Why ME, though? Why's it gotta be me?
Red: You're the newbie. DJay respects that about you, probably. So he's trying to turn you into the epic.. protagonist person.
Shadow: ..oh, alright! I'll do it, I'll go get the freaking chaos drives again.
Red: We're all pissed at this new development, Shadow. Trust me. But we need to work together.
Shadow: ...I'll give it a shot.
Red: That's the spirit.
[they re-enter the Dark Garden]
Chapter 4: Dance on a Volcano
[Shadow lies down on a hill, looking at the dark sky]
Shadow: *sigh* This isn't gonna be easy.
[..suddenly, he spies a shining yellow light nearby]
[it's on top of Dark Mountain, which I just totally made up for this story]
[it's a volcano!]
[Shadow starts heading up the mountain, and holy mother of god, he's got to move faster than THAT to get to the top!]
[it's a dirty old mountain, all covered in smoke!]
[She can turn you to stone, so you'd better start doing it right.]
[on his left and on his right are crosses of green and crosses of blue]
Shadow: Of friends who didn't make it through, I imagine.
[Out of the night and out of the dark.]
Shadow: Into the fire and into the fight.
Shade: Well, that's the way the heroes go! Hohohoh.
[Shadow merely grins at Shade, who pats him on the back]
[Through a crack in mother Earth, blazing hot, the molten rock pills out over the land]
Shade: If we don't want to boil as well, we'd better start to dance.
Shadow: ..do you want to dance with me?
Shade: You'd better start doing it right, then.
[they reach the top of the volcano]
Shade: The music's playing, the note's are right, so put your left foot first and move into the light.
[Shadow puts his left foot first]
Shade: The edge of this hill is the edge of the world, and if we're going to cross, you'd better start doing it right.
Shadow: And so had you.
Shade: Haha, yes. We'd better start doing it right.
[Let the dance begin.]
[FIRE spurts out as Shadow takes a leap onto a rock!]
[Realizing that convection clearly does not exist anymore, Shade follows suit]
[the rock starts to topple and our heroes hop to a nearby rock that seems to be going nowhere]
[the yellow light from above beckons Shadow to a rock just past a random lava waterfall]
Shade: WHY THE HELL IS THERE A LAVA WATERFALL HERE? THAT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE!
Shadow: IT'S A CHALLENGE! It's all a challenge, and it never ends.
Shade: WHAT?
Shadow: NEVER MIND! JUST FOLLOW CLOSELY.
[Shadow pulls out his master protagonist skills and picks up a giant rock somehow]
[he throws the rock into the lavafall, and that splits all the lava]
[Look, don't ask me how any of this works. This is all for your entertainment.]
[the split in the lava allows the protagonists to.. run. On the lava. Past the split.]
[They make it to the yellow light, aaaand it's a chaos drive!]
[CHIRP CHIRP, BRRRING and all that]
[But hang on, Shadow. I need to speak with you.]
Shadow: Oh, and here I thought we almost had a fourth wall going for a second.
Chapter 5: Vacant
[I'm sorry that you have to go through all of this. Really. I empathize with you so much.]
Shadow: Yeah, and you pity me. So why the hell are you putting me through it?
[Well, for one thing, I really can't leave you sitting there indefinitely.]
Shadow: But why'd you even start this crazy journey, why are you making it so hard for me?
[I need to be a good writer.]
Shadow: Oh please. Whether you're a good writer or not, you're making a lot of mistakes already.
[I know. I know, I shouldn't even be having this discussion with you, I shouldn't have made this a work of fanfiction, and I shouldn't throw in so many cheap allegories.]
Shadow: And no one even READS this shit!
[That's no excuse to make it a boring story!]
Shadow: You're really an odd mind, Deej. Why are you so conflicted? Do you care for us, or do you want entertainment?
[I.. I need to finish DCA. I need to at least end this story arc professionally. I can't just throw in "They won, the end" and call it a day. That's crummy.]
Shadow: But DAMMIT, man! Screw professionalism! Try cutting me some fucking SLACK!
[I DO CUT YOU SLACK. When life's throwing ME all its curve balls, I don't get to talk to the man responsible!]
Shadow: ...BAH. Fine, fine fine, fine. Fine. What do you want to talk about, then?
[We need to discuss your goals. Where you need to go.]
Shadow: Alright. Lay it on me.
[You have a chaos drive in Future Europe.]
[You have a chaos drive in Russia.]
[You have, like, three chaos drives to choose from in Chao Talk.]
[You have a chaos drive in Future America.]
[You have a chaos drive IN SPAAAAAACE.]
[You have another chaos drive in super-Future America.]
Shadow: Alright, awesome! I guess I'll go tell everyone and we'll telepor--
[Well. I can't give you teleporting abilities just yet.]
Shadow: Okay, I meant the Daleks would teleport us, but--
[I know. I can't let you do that.]
Shadow: What? Why not?
[..do you remember that guy, the Butterfly Collector?]
Shadow: The narrator for The Lamb, yeah.
[Well, he's really the one who's been making this story harder for entertainment purposes.]
Shadow: ..but the Tails Doll killed him.
[The Tails Doll cursed him. He's still alive, basically. And he won't let me let you teleport.]
Shadow: Son of a-- okay, where's the Butterfly Collector?
[..I.. don't know.]
Shadow: You don't know? You're the writer! You HAVE to know!
[I haven't exactly written it all out.]
Shadow: Well.. gah.
[Yeah. "Gah."]
[Shadow gets back to the story; he and Shade head back the Dark Garden and fill in all the details and all that]
Shadow: ..so there! We have a lot of work to do, and I can't say I really want to do it all.
Mp: But we can do it as a team, man! It'll be less of a hassle individually.
Shadow: Yeah. ..yeah, good point.
Shade: You distracted, kid?
Shadow: Can you blame me?
Shade: 'Course not. Now c'mon. We'd better start doing some recon on the Butterfly Collector.
[the camera fades out as the characters start leaving the Dark Garden]

[the camera fades in in a cheap motel room as the future Shade wakes up]
ShadeF: ..wait, what?
TO BE CONTINUED!