“Oh man! This is going to be my most awesomest, gruesomest and physically assaulting prank yet!”
Strong Bad slowly rises above the brick wall. On the other side is The King of Town, standing obliviously on a giant red X marked on the ground.
“Doo hoo hoo!” The King doodily-hoos. “Oh, I’m just standing around obliviously, a-minding my business!”
Just above his head is an elaborately built contraption containing lighter fluid, axes, swords, flame throwers, and just about any weapon you could think of– all controlled by the remote located smack dab in the middle of Strong Bad’s glove.
“This is it! The day I finally kill The King of Town!” the wrestleman cheers. “Which,” he places a glove on his chin. “I guess, makes it less of a prank and more of a… homicide. Still, equally hilarious.” He lifts his glove above the giant red button of the remote with a sinister grin. “Alright, The King of Town! Prepare to meet your-”
He’s cut short as dark clouds overcast and thunder crashes. “Doom?” The once blue sky desaturates into gray and the clouds above Strong Bad swirl and flicker with bolts of electricity. The clouds rotate closer and closer until suddenly lightning strikes, just barely missing Strong Bad. “Eep!” He jumps over the wall and hides on the other side. Where the lightning had struck, a large, dark, swirly portal thing (clearly just the liquify effect in photoshop) had appeared. He peeks over the wall, curiously. Meanwhile, The King of Town behind him is still obliviously standing in the field… obliviously.
From the portal, a rugged glove emerges. With a grunt and a push a boot follows. “Stop right-” the entity says, straining itself for a moment before popping out in whole, face planting onto the grass with a whined “Ow!” Its tattered cape enfolds over it in ravels. Strong Bad stands up from where he’s crouched down with a cocked eyebrow… (?)
The portal stretches in vertically and horizontally before popping out of existence. The dark clouds part, allowing the sun to shine through again as the sky returns to its natural color. The portal-being lays on the floor groaning for a few more seconds before pushing itself up.
“Stop right there!” it shouts.
All Strong Bad can make out of the creature is a husky red head and a fat little body before it pounces over the wall and tackles Strong Bad to the ground. The remote launches out of Strong Bad’s hands and lands perfectly upright on the brick wall.
“Aah!” Strong Bad screams. “Who are you and why are you so handsome?!” he shouts, shakily covering his face from any impending damage.
The creature leans in closer. “I’m you… from the future!” If it was still stormy, lightning would’ve stricken behind him right then. But since it isn’t he just makes the noises with his mouth instead. “Ksssh! Ksshh! Pshh!”
Strong Bad slowly lowers his gloves. He carefully observes every feature of this alleged “future version” of himself. For starters, he’s got an eyepatch and half of his face is made out of metal. Yep, nothing out of the ordinary there.
He looks a bit lower. Instead of his usual tight pants and no shirt ensemble he’s wearing a full black bodysuit, a large cape wrapping around his neck and he’s even sporting a belt with pockets on both sides around his waist. Aside from the apocalyptic attire, it was… well, him! Even down to his secret mole on his cheek that nobody but him knows about.
“Ooooh…” Strong Bad nods. “Awesome!” He bounces up from the ground and the future him falls backwards. “Did you come back in time to help me pull off this prankicide?” he says, picking up the remote and doing an excited little tippy tappy dance.
“Wha- no!” the other Strong Bad shouts, dusting himself off as he stands up. “I came back to stop you! Er, me… we.” He gestures between the two of them.
“What?! Stop me?! I would never stop myself from brutally harming someone!”
“Listen to me, man,” future Strong Bad puts both gloves on his past self’s shoulders. “What you’re about to do will cause a sequence of events in the future that are so horrible they make grandma’s sweaters look like Vera Wang!”
“You’re making that up!” Strong Bad smacks his gloves off of… himself? Oh boy, this is going to get confusing. “There’s no way something that terrible could be a result of something as harmless as killing The King of Town! …Well, harmless for me.”
“I’m still oblivious over here!” the King of Town shouts from across the field.
His future self facepalms. “No, you don’t understand!” he groans. “Here. Let me show you.” He pulls out a flashlight from his belt pocket.
“Um… a flashlight? You guys still use flashlights in the future?” Strong Bad reaches his glove out to touch it but it’s quickly yanked in the opposite direction away from him.
“It’s not a flashlight!” future Strong Bad shouts. “It’s a time machine! And besides, I’m only from, like, a few weeks into the future.”
“What?!” Strong Bad exclaims. ”But, wh- what happened to your face?!”
Strong Bad’s future counterpart tilts his head curiously before realizing what the other is referring to. “Oh this?” he points to the robotic half of his face. “Nothing. I just look cool like this.”
“Can you even see?” asks Strong Bad.
“Yes!” he says, facing the complete opposite direction. Strong Bad grabs him by the shoulder and turns him back around. He pauses, disoriented for a moment. “...No!”
“Right... So this, uh, time machine,” Strong Bad says with air-quotes. “How’s it woik?”
“See, I set the setting how far back or forward I wanna go,” he demonstrates by rotating the setting on the flashlight to a week into the future. “And with the flick of this switch…” He imitates the action and makes a flicking noise with his mouth. “It’ll take me there! Pretty high tech, huh?”
“No, not really.”
“Shut up.”
Strong Bad grabs… uh, Strong Bad, by his empty glove. He flips the switch on the flashlight and reality itself around them distorts. They both voip out of existence. The remote once in Strong Bad’s hand twirls out of his glove and perfectly lands on the big red button, activating the contraption set above The King of Town.
“Uh oh…” the King mutters.
For a second it’s bright, but once Strong Bad’s eyes adjust to it, he sees every second passing by at once in a motion of constant changing colors. He looks around and sees that they’re both floating in a temporal void.
His future self is laid back, arms propping up the back of his neck and his legs crossed over each other. This wasn’t either Strong Bad’s first rodeo in portal-like shenanigans, so neither of them were too amazed by what they were seeing.
“So,” Strong Bad swims his way through space over to himself. “What should I be calling you? I mean, me.”
“Uhh… I dunno,” the other Strong Bad shrugs and twirls around, still holding his position. “Howza bou’ you call me… The Hot One.”
“Hey! I’m already the hot one!”
“I know!”
“Ugh.” Strong Bad rubs a glove over his chin. “Okay. Uhh… Ooh! Ooh! I know! Captain Fist o’ Punch! I’ve always wanted people to call me that but I could never get it to stick!”
“Oh yeah! Sploodge.”
Strong Bad snorts. “...Sploodge?”
“Oh, right. We say sploodge now instead of cool in the future…”
Strong Bad looks at him questioningly.
“You just had to be there.”
“Okay, I changed my mind. Your name is sploodge now,” Strong Bad says.
“Sploodge.”
Suddenly, it gets bright again. Strong Bad squeezes his eyes shut and he can feel the particles in his body tingle as his body places itself into the future. After a few seconds the tingling stops. Strong Bad peeks his eyes open to see the same green grass they had been standing on moments prior.
“Woah, it looks…” Strong Bad takes in the view around him. “...Exactly the same.” He turns around and where The King of Town had been standing is a giant tombstone in his place. “Woahly crap! That’s new!”
“Because you pulled that totally kick awesome prank, the Of Town met a grisly fate!” says Sploodge.
“Since when did I start using the word grisly?”
“Since a few weeks into the future.”
Strong Bad puts both gloves on his hips and looks around. Aside from the obvious, there were no drastic changes or anything. Sure, it seemed a little more flowery but the plants usually grow better this time of year.
“Huh,” says Strong Bad. “This doesn't seem so bad. I mean, if anything I did the world a favor! Maybe we can finally solve world hunger now that the king isn't eating everything on the face of the planet.”
“That wasn't the bad part…”
In the distance, The Hornblower blows his horn. Both Strong Bads look out over the bushes and get a clear shot of the king’s castle just over the hills. Its toothy grin opens and sticks out its long drawbridge tongue and Strong Bad’s expression falls at who’s bald forehead it is bearing the King’s crown.
“Oh. No.”
“Good morning my life blossoms!” Marzipan greets to the field.
Now that’s different. He should've been able to tell by the overbearing smell of celery in the air that something wasn't right.
“And welcome to another beautiful day!” she continues. “Today’s daily affirmation is: Your problems are only as bad as you make them! We have another productive day ahead of us so let’s all put on our work shoes so we can take them right off! And now for today’s schedule! King Homestar, if you would?”
“King who?!" Strong Bad shrieks. Sploodge slaps a glove over Strong Bad’s mouth and shushes him.
Stepping out from the castle, a depressed, fat looking Homestar Runner with a five o’ clock shadow unravels a large scroll. Unlike Marzipan, his crown is made out of paper maché– beaten up, stained and held together by tape. Much like his spirit. But at least he gets to wear the King’s robe.
Homestar clears his throat and begins reading off the schedule. “Uh, 8am morning self care. 8:30am, twenty minutes of meditation…”
“Let’s open up those chakras, people!” Marzipan interrupts.
“9am mud bath, 9:30am pilates…” Homestar yawns and his eyes slowly shut as he begins trailing off into a snore. Marzipan nervously laughs and kicks him in the shin. Homestar snorts awake and deliriously cries out the last order, “And 12pm group therapy!”
“That’s right, life blossoms! We’ll be hosting group therapy for all of my troubled saplings. With a little bit of love, we can all become somebody entirely different!” She glares over the hills in Sploodge’s direction. “…Even you.”
Sploodge waggles a fist in the air. “I’ll get you! Just you wait!”
Rolling her eyes, Marzipan walks back inside with her subordinates following close behind her. The castle rolls its tongue back up and slams its teeth shut. Ouch.
Strong Bad shoves Sploodge’s glove off of him, picking a bit of stuffing out of his mouth. “Marzipan’s queen?!” he exclaims. “But… why?! And how! But more importantly, why?!”
“Well, after the Of Town died we were all pretty unsure of what to do next…” Sploodge explains.
Strong Bad points to himself. “Uh, hello? Leader of currently established Strongbadia and former leader of formerly established Free Country, USA here?”
“That’s what I said!” says Sploodge. “But apparently we’re a ‘hereditary monarchy’ now all of a sudden.”
“But the Of Town doesn't have any heirs?”
“Yeah, well. We got as vaguely close as we could.”
“So, if Marzipan’s queen and Homestar’s king… does that mean…?”
“Don't worry,” reassures Sploodge. “I hid snakes in their wedding cake. And their presents. And their pockets. And their mom’s pockets.”
Strong Bad wipes the sweat off his forehead. “Phew! Y’know, seeing Homestar fat and disgusting almost makes this kinda worth it! Oh man, I wonder how Strong Mad and The Cheat are holding up.”
“There’s no time for that, man!” says Sploodge as he twists the setting on the flashlight. “We gotta get you back to the past before-”
Strong Bad snatches the flashlight out of Sploodge’s gloves. “Now hang on just a minute! Maybe this future isn't so bad!”
“What?! I just thoroughly explained to you how horrible it is! With visuals even!”
Sploodge pounces at Strong Bad but is stopped by a glove to the forehead holding him back. “I wanna at least look around first! What if the girls are hotter in the future!”
“Grr!” Sploodge pushes past Strong Bad and quickly whips back around into action. “They’re not! I checked! Now give me the stupid flashli- I mean, time machine!”
“No!”
“Grah!” Sploodge tackles Strong Bad and they tumble to the floor into a comical dust cloud of violence. The flashlight gets thrown into the air, twirling around before landing on the grass and shattering on impact.
Strong Bad and Sploodge freeze mid face punch. Sploodge crawls off Strong Bad and to the flashlight. He holds the fragments in his gloves. “Great. Just perfect. Now we gotta go ask baby Strong Sad for a new one.”
“Well, where is he?”
(This was probably my favorite chapter to write. I always thought it was pretty silly how Strong Bad talked to himself in sbemail pizzaz during his interview with himself. Though, in retrospect it's also... kinda sad. But we can get into that later. I also really liked the princess Marzipan idea that was cut from the website and it only felt right that she inherited the throne. Of course, that means her and Homestar were gonna have to finally tie the matriachal knot. That in itself should explain what happened to Homestar's dignity.)