-Scott-
Now let me tell you, child, of a war that is about to come. Sides have been chosen, pitting friend against friend, and brother against brother. I have chosen my side for its touchpad interface, and its DualShock controller with a speaker. Winter is coming, and the time of battle is nearly upon us.
Cartman strolled down the gently curving path through the Garden of Andros, pausing before the rose bush, this time plucking two flowers from it. He handed one of them to the President of the Sony Corporation and the other to the American businessman beside him who was translating their discussion. Screw the half dozen lovesick Japanese minions who were following a respectful distance behind. Their only purpose for even being here was a futile hope of catching a glimpse of the beautiful but elusive Princess Kenny, or perhaps a peek up her dress. They can pick their own goddam flowers.
Besides, the old man who owned this garden was pissed off enough already at how many yellow roses Cartman had given to others he'd sought to betray here these past two weeks.
"Mr. President, I was hoping I could talk to you about Lady McCormick," Cartman said, the businessman translating. The Wizard King had disguised himself as a commoner and had managed to lure the President and his entourage here by making them believe that he was one of the people vying for a Play Station 4 this coming Black Friday.
"You mean Plincess Kinnyeee!" one of the minions shouted angrily in broken English, his eyes glowing with love for the beautiful princess. Cartman noted that referring to Kenny as "Lady McCormick" was somehow insulting to them, and filed that bit of knowledge away for possible future exploitation.
"Uh, yeah, whatever." Cartman glared at the minions behind him. "I fear that perhaps... Princess Kenny—" The words rolled off his tongue like poison, Kenny's betrayal of his side still a fresh wound—"misunderstood somehow the power of that pendant you gave her." They slowed as they reached the arched trellis near the center of the garden. "Now that George R.R. Martin has pushed black Friday back to December sixth, there's only two days until the final battle. I feel that pendant is of some importance; but all Lady...Princess Kinny has done so far is wear it around h...her neck and fly through the air all excited about being a Princess—"
As those last words were translated, the President of Sony's face darkened in anger. "He did what?" he asked angrily, and Cartman didn't need to wait for the translation to understand the question. He'd heard enough of the Japanese language over the years to understand it enough to not need a translator.
The President of Sony Corporation stared at Cartman incredulously. He spoke in rapid Japanese, most of which Cartman understood. "You Amelicans are all so stupid! He's not supposed to wear it around his neck and pretend to be a plincess!" His voice rose to an angry shout, and this time Cartman clearly understood every word, even though the words themselves made no sense: "He's supposed to stick it up his ahhsss!"
The businessman looked at his President horrified, seeking confirmation that he wanted that last sentence translated. The President's steely glare made it abundantly clear that he did.
The translator looked back to Cartman and translated: "The President of Sony Corporation humbly requests that Princess Kenny insert the pendant into...her anus."
Cartman blinked. "What?"
The president continued, with the businessman translating. "It is a device of great power! It must be placed beside the root chakra to function, and when used properly..."
As the President of Sony explained what the device he had bestowed on Kenny really was capable of, Cartman was suddenly in a hurry to leave this peaceful place. There was very important work to be done; Cartman had to have that pendant. Of course there was one more matter to attend to first...
The window on the second floor of the house flew open with a bang, and the old man stuck his head out. "Hey, you damn kid! I told you to stay the hell out of my yard!" He leaned his elbows on the windowsill. "And who are all these people?"
"Why don't you mind your own goddamned business?" Cartman shouted angrily. "We have important matters to discuss here!"
"Important matters of betrayal is more like it!" the old man shouted back. His angry glare shifted to the man beside Cartman. "I know who you are! You're the President of Sony Corporation! For the last two weeks, this kid has been trying to figure out a way to betray his friends so he can be one of the first to get inside the mall and get an Xbox..."
Cartman's eyes widened. "Shut up!" he said through gritted teeth.
"He's going to betray you too!" the old man warned. "Or else he wouldn't be here, walking through my Garden of Betrayal with you. I don't know what he's up to, but you can't trust a word he says!"
The President of Sony was about to grab Cartman, but at that moment Princess Kenny flew high overhead, leaving a trail of rainbows and shiny sparkles in her wake. Cartman used the moment that the Sony people were distracted to slip between the bushes and make his escape.
"Lady McCormick," Cartman said in the hushed tone worthy of a princess, all the while eyeing the glowing pendant around her neck. It was their second walk together through the garden. He plucked a rose and handed it to her. "I was hoping to talk to you about...ah, screw it!" He grabbed Princess Kenny's elbow and plunged the hypodermic syringe into her bicep and depressed the plunger. Princess Kenny let out an angry yell just before she lost consciousness, and Cartman grabbed her and eased her to the ground. He was about to remove the brilliant ruby-colored pendant from her neck, marveling at its bullet shape and how it obviously was intended to be worn somewhere other than around the neck when—
"Oh, no you don't!" the all too familiar voice called out behind him as he lay Princess Kenny flat on the ground. The old man was once again hollering out his window. "It's one thing when you kids trespass on my property and talk about betraying each other! It's another when you start drugging each other. I'm calling the cops!"
Cartman whirled around angrily. "Then call the fucking cops! And when they get here, I'll tell them that it was me who took a crap in your garden; and when you blamed Stan Marsh for it, you caused an innocent kid to get grounded! What do you think will happen to you then, huh?"
The old man had never expected to become a victim of one of Cartman's betrayals. His face fell, and his voice quavered. "Okay...what will it take to make this go away?"
Cartman removed the pendant from Princess Kenny's neck and put it in his coat pocket. "Well...let's see here..."
Ten minutes later, Cartman was riding shotgun next to the old man in his fifteen-year-old Cadillac, Princess Kenny's unconscious body safely hidden in the trunk. Together they dragged the sleeping princess into the rat-infested McCormick house, through the living room where her parents slept (Cartman had infused the same anesthetic he had used on the princess—only in a much larger dose—into a family meal of Kung Pao Chicken from City Wok which he had anonymously left at the front door earlier today, ding-dong-ditch style) and into her highnesses' filthy bedroom. Just before the old man turned to leave, Cartman said ominously: "So...see you tomorrow then?"
The old man nodded humbly and left. As the Cadillac drove away outside, Cartman securely trussed up the sleeping princess on her lumpy mattress with two rolls of duct tape. Then he sat down in front of her Play Station, turned on the game console, and as he looked through the meager selection of available games, undid his pants and lowered them. After an uncomfortable fifteen seconds, the pendant had been placed in its intended location, immediately next to Cartman's root chakra, or in more clinical terms, about four inches inside his rectum.
"Oh, yeah!" Cartman shouted gleefully as the power of the pendant flowed through him; a brilliant ruby colored light shined on the floor around him from between his ass cheeks. "Yeah!"
It was as if his mind was flowing through the game console and into the internet, and he was free to go anywhere in the world he wanted. Once he chose a destination, he knew everything about the person or persons on the other end. It was the greatest power he had ever felt in his young hot life.
He paused first inside the game console of a little girl in Peoria, Illinois playing Hello Kitty Island Adventure. He watched her innocently playing for a few moments, and then called in a nuclear strike on the island from someone in Vermont playing 'Call of Duty 2'. He stayed around just long enough after the mushroom clouds had laid waste to the island to hear the little girl shrieking over the teamspeak connection before he moved over to a game of Madden football. Once there, he sent in a stampeding herd of dinosaurs from a game of Jurassic Park for Xbox being played by someone in the United Kingdom.
"CooOol!" Cartman cried. He rampaged through peoples' games throughout the world for a few minutes. He didn't know it, but the media was onto the story instantly, covering what it was describing as a "world-wide hack of every known type of gaming system." Cartman finally grew weary and settled on a slow, boring, and repetitious game, having had enough excitement for today.
Behind him, Princess Kenny was stirring. She opened her eyes and first noticed the bright red light shining from Cartman's exposed ass and bathing the room in a brilliant scarlet glow. She knew at that moment that her wonderful pendant had been taken away and placed there inside Cartman, and without it, Princess Kenny was just plain Kenny again. He quietly observed what Cartman was doing for a moment; he had seen this game once before, several years ago, on the History Channel.
"Cartman," he finally asked. "...is that Pong?"
"Yes, Kinny." Cartman replied sarcastically; he was utterly mesmerized by the game, which consisted of nothing more than sending a blip of light slowly back and forth the width of the screen. "I am interfaced with someone named Kevin Stottgard, who is 29 years old and lives in his parents' basement in Pennsylvania. His only form of entertainment besides internet porn and old science fiction magazines is playing 'pong' on his thirty year old Atari."
The blip of light bounced off Kevin's paddle and drifted back toward Cartman's side of the screen.
"Hey, Kevin! How's it going?" Cartman suddenly said loudly. Kenny had no idea how Kevin was supposed to be able to hear him, but evidently he had, as a moment later a confused voice came from inside of Kenny's Play Station:
"Hi...who are you?"
"The name's Eric. But that doesn't matter. You're a loser, and that's what matters!" Cartman introduced several Pac Man ghosts to the game, which proceeded to eat the slowing-moving blip of light as well as the centerline 'net', and the game score (which currently read 17 - 2). The scene changed yet again; now he was driving a race car down a track. "Hey, Charles!" Cartman accelerated his car and sent it careening into another race car, sending it crashing into the stands and exploding. "Nice driving, asshole!" He went back to the Pong game, watching the blue ghosts continue to devour everything on the screen.
"Cartman...what the hell are you doing?"
"I can play with anyone, on any game system anywhere in the world, even if they aren't connected to the internet," Cartman replied, still not believing his good fortune to be in control of this amazing device. "I have finally seen the light! The Sony Play Station 4 with the rectal interface is clearly the gaming system of the future."
Once the Pac Man ghosts had completely devoured everything on the Pong screen from the unfortunate Kevin Stottgard's game, Cartman carefully removed the pendant from himself with its chain and put it in his coat pocket. "By the time your parents wake up, and you manage to untie yourself, Black Friday will be a thing of the past," he told the furious Kenny as he walked out of his room to go home.
It took Kenny 25 minutes to free himself from the duct tape.
Kenny, disguising himself as Princess Kenny, selected the most perfect yellow rose he could find and plucked it. "Sir Craig, I wanted to talk to you about something that was stolen from me." He handed the rose to Craig Tucker.
Craig politely smelled the flower and then jammed it into his coat pocket. "That pendant. Yeah, Kenny, that was kind of fucked up—"
"Princess Kenny, please."
Craig snorted. "Of course. Your highness...Princess Kenny." With his voice, it was impossible to tell if he was being sincere or sarcastic. "I was pretty pissed when Cartman told me he had done that. All this betrayal and backstabbing is getting sort of old. First, Cartman gets Stan grounded, then he conned the President of Sony to get him into this garden for something...and the next day he drugged you. This is getting out of hand."
"Then you'll help me get back what is mine?"
"What's in it for me?"
"The reward that I know you want the most." Kenny curtsied, exposing a good bit of thigh. "A night alone, with your princess."
Craig nodded, and Kenny suppressed a smirk. He knew that promise would do the trick. "All right, Princess Kenny. I'll help you get it back."
"And I want to help too!" The old man shouted down to them from the window. "I'll do anything to get back at that fat bastard!"
They'd counted on the well-known fact that Cartman was a very sound sleeper. Craig and the old man stood the ladder up outside the second floor window, and Kenny climbed up and into Cartman's bedroom. Cartman was so smug in his belief that Kenny would remain tied up for at least a day that he'd been careless, and Kenny easily found the pendant on the floor, still inside his coat pocket. As soon as Kenny had placed it around his neck again (where it rested directly next to his heart chakra, which caused an entirely different type of energy to flow through him than putting it up his ass would), Kenny felt his powers returning to him and he was once again Princess Kenny.
She sailed majestically out the window, flying happily through the air for a moment before landing next to Craig and the old man, who were already carrying the ladder back to the man's car. "Oh, thank you, Sir Craig!" she simpered. "Your reward shall be great!"
"Then I'll see you tomorrow, right after Black Friday is over," Craig replied, actually sounding eager.
The red light atop the TV news camera came on. Niles Lawson spoke into his microphone.
"Tom, I'm standing outside the South Park Mall, where excitement is running high! Both Xbox and Play Station factions are heavily armed in anticipation of Black Friday. It is going to be a bloodbath down here, so come on out to South Park Mall, and bring the entire family!"
Excitement indeed was running high throughout most of the thousands of people gathered in the parking lot outside the mall entrance. There were doubts in others about the wisdom of the course they were on, particularly in some of the boys, even though they had been planning this day for weeks.
Stan and Kyle were heartsick over the fight they'd had that seemed to have led to the end of their friendship. Stan looked out over the mob of bloodthirsty shoppers, and was about to raise his voice against the pending violence when Kyle beat him to it.
"Wait!" Kyle's lone voice cried out above the crowd, his voice both heavily distorted and amplified by the megaphone he was screaming into. It was enough to make the mob fall silent for a moment. "Can't you see this has gotten completely out of hand?" A new sound, an approaching helicopter, threatened to drown him out. Most of the crowd wasn't paying attention anyway, but Stan was, hoping his best friend could somehow prevent the bloodbath that was certain to happen if things continued on their present course. Perhaps it would heal the rift between them as well.
"You see...I learned something today!" Kyle shouted, but the rotors of the helicopter drowned out everything else he said.
After all that Stan had witnessed in the past few days (Bill Gates providing guns to the Xbox faction, his ruinous and seemingly final fight with Kyle, Kenny both cross-dressing and gaining the ability to fly...), nothing could surprise him anymore, but this came close: A large helicopter, obviously custom-built (or modified) in the shape of an erect penis, came into view from behind the mall. Stan wasn't even surprised to see that Butters was at the controls.
The peniscopter flew awkwardly toward him, lurching several times as it drifted closer, finally landing hard on the parking lot a few dozen feet away from Stan. Butters shut down its engine, and the rotors above the enormous metal and glass phallus slowed to a stop.
Kyle raised the megaphone as a shocked silence descended over the crowd. "Aw, the hell with this!" he hollered, throwing the megaphone down in disgust.
Scott Malkinson climbed out of the helicopter first, looking happy for once and munching on a slice of pizza. Butters stepped out next, followed by a large man with a beard.
"That's George R.R. Martin!" Cartman said loudly, turning to address his army. He had not yet noticed the theft of his precious pendant. "At last! We can find out how this battle was won in 'Game of Thrones.'"
"Now listen!" Butters shouted to the crowd while staring directly at Cartman. None of them had ever seen him look so angry, all pretense of staying in the ‘Paladin Butters' character now gone. "I'm sick and tired of this! I've been listening to this guy all the way from New Mexico go on and on and on about wieners, and I'm sick of it! Eric, you want to ask him about 'Game of Thrones', you go right ahead! I'm finished...I'm just going to go home now, and keep playing with my old Play Station."
"Mr. Martin!" Cartman said, stepping forward. "I need you to tell me right now what happens when the dragons arrive. I need to know—"
Butters wasn't finished ranting yet. "And he doesn't even like fan fiction! He says it's...it's 'copyright infringement, and a bad exercise for aspiring writers.'"
Cartman pinched the bridge of his nose. "Butters...that's sort of irrelevant, isn't it?"
Butters suddenly looked run down, like an old clock that needed winding. He looked at his feet while rubbing his knuckles together and muttered, "Well...it seemed sort of relevant..."
"Enough of this!" Cartman cried. "Tell me how 'Game of Thrones' ends."
"It's too late for that!" Bill Gates said, speaking into his own megaphone to address the crowd. "Black Friday officially begins in—" dramatic pause—"one minute!"
Screams rang through the crowd. The moment finally was at hand. The crowd, which had been lurching zombie-like toward the mall broke ranks and surged toward the entrance.
Princess Kenny flew over the enormous mob, landing next to the mall entrance. The ruby-colored pendant once again swung from its chain around her neck. She knew she had less than a minute to prevent the massacre that was about to take place. Now that she knew the true power of the pendant the President of Sony had bestowed upon her, she knew that none of this was necessary. She tried to shout over the roar of the crowd, but her frail princess voice couldn't be heard over the chaos that had once again descended on the mob.
Bill Gates amplified voice roared: "Twenty seconds! Ready your weapons!" Dozens of guns (all with the MicroSoft logo stenciled across their barrels) were raised to the firing position.
"Ready..." Bill Gates bellowed. "Aim...FIRE!!"
Princess Kenny's desperate cry of "No!" was drowned out by the deafening sound of forty six gunshots ringing out simultaneously, their echoes reverberating off the sides of the mall. Forty three bullets tore through Princess Kenny. She was dead before her body hit the ground. One bullet shattered the front window of the Abercrombie and Fitch store and blew the head off a mannequin before lodging in the wall behind a terrified clerk. Another ricocheted off the handrail of the escalator and destroyed both the 70-inch TV and computer display models in the RadioHut that Randy had once hoped to buy. The final bullet plowed through a shelf loaded with the all new Stop Touching Me Elmo dolls; ridiculous red plushies (and a couple of plastic eyeballs) flew in all directions. One of the dolls croaked from where it had landed on the floor, "Will you milk Elmo's prostate?"
As the echoes of the gunfire died, a shocked silence fell over the mob. They looked around at each other, suddenly realizing what they had done as a pall of common sense descended over the crowd. Stan's voice rang out clearly over the awed hush on that cold Black Friday morning.
"Oh my God! We killed Kenny!"
The hush deepened, and from across the parking lot came Kyle's answering cry: "We're bastards!"
They looked in horror at Princess Kenny's body. Everyone was still much as they'd been ten seconds ago, frozen in place, except that rats were already descending to feast on the Princess's corpse. Stan and Kyle ran across the parking lot toward each other, throwing their arms around each other's shoulders and crying "I'm sorry Stan!" and "I'm sorry Kyle!" to each other.
And so child, my body was laid to rest beneath an enormous granite tombstone, hurriedly prepared by local artisans and paid for by Bill Gates and the President of Sony. The entire town turned out to mourn my passing, and in the coming days when it came time to divide my estate, the treacherous King Eric flashed his half of our BFF necklace, thus convincing the kingdom that he was my BFF, and was ushered into the lawyers' office when it came time for the reading of my will. There was, afterall, previous legal precedent for this.
As a result of the BFF necklace, Cartman received an impressive amount of Princess Kenny's worldly possessions, including a sizeable porn collection (magazines as well as DVDs), her outdated Play Station, and about a dozen orange parkas. There was only one thing conspicuously missing.
"Where is the...pendant...she was wearing around her neck?" Cartman asked the lawyers, trying to sound innocent. "I must have that! It...it was another symbol of our BFF-ness."
The attorney in charge of Princess Kenny's estate shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry, Mr. Cartman. That appeared to be nothing but an inexpensive piece of costume jewelry. It was buried along with her."
Cartman felt as if his head was about to explode as he cried out, "Nooo!!"
Just before midnight on the day Princess Kenny was buried, Cartman stood before her grave, clutching a shovel in his left hand and looking at the massive headstone Bill Gates and Sony's President had erected for her. This had been the longest day of Cartman's life, and the walk to the cemetery had taken nearly his last ounce of strength. Every muscle in his body hurt, and it was beginning to snow. Despite this, he was still able to laugh at the incongruity of the words on the tombstone: Kenny McCormick was carved in the granite across the top, and below that was etched Angels watch over our fair Princess. It was so cold that, despite his bright yellow gloves, his hands were nearly frozen, and his breath made visible clouds around his head.
He began digging. Three hours later he had finally dug down far enough to expose the entire top of the casket. Several powerful blows with the point of the shovel splintered the locks on it, and Cartman finally could pry up the lid. He was catching his second wind now, believing he was about to again possess the most powerful talisman that had ever existed. As he lifted back the lid, he looked down and saw purple satin lining the inside of the casket and a tiny pillow with a few golden hairs resting on it, upon which someone's head had once been laid. But the casket itself was empty.
"No!!!" Cartman screamed.
And so child, Sony became the winner of the console wars, and in the coming months with the mass production of the rectal interface, became the game console system of the future. Because I am an immortal as well as a Princess, I was returned to my throne and under my leadership, a new gaming experience was brought forth to the world, one of kindness as people joyfully interacted with each other, for I alone have worn the pendant near both major chakras, thus combining their two powers within me. Bill Gates resigned in disgrace, and as the days grew long again, the boys of South Park grew ever paler as they avoided the sunlight to play 'Call of Duty' during their every waking hour.
The long winter had finally ended.
THE END
If you enjoyed this story, remember to check out the original artwork that inspired it!