A remake of the infamous creepypasta Sonic.exe, written by the author of the original, Jack Cranely, as well as Jack's last creepypasta before abandoning the trend for good.
The story starts off identical to the original. A young Sonic the Hedgehog fan named Tom hasn't heard from his best friend, Kyle, in three weeks. He soon receives a video game seemingly from Kyle entitled “X”, and begins to play it.
But as he keeps playing, he soon finds himself drawn into an intricate web of darkness, all ruled by an Eldritch Abomination that seeks to play a sadistic game...
The full story can be found here
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This remake provides examples of:
- Adaptational Expansion: Unlike in the original, this version heavily expands on Tom's thoughts, as well as X himself.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: Tom and X have this discussion in the climax, with Tom taking the former ideology and X the latter. Interestingly, X's opinion isn't grounded in any sort of inherent value of life. He proclaims Tom's suicide attempts disgraceful and cowardly because as they both know, at this point, X has the souls of all of Tom's friends and if he kills himself, he will be abandoning them to X's non-existent mercy. He still tries to do it, but X takes him just in time.
- Cosmic Horror Story: Same as before, but much, MUCH more explicit now.
- Cult: The Cult of X, which worships X like a holy savior and plans to ensure his victory in enslaving humanity.
- Darker and Edgier: We see Kyle's dead body, X being more open in confronting his victims, and things getting Bloodier and Gorier.
- Deadly Game: Forces his victims into one before he takes them.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: X says in the climax that Tom is on his way of becoming one of his "favorites", before advancing on him in a disturbingly lustful, predatory manner. It's unknown what X was going to do to Tom if Tom didn't knock the bookcase over him, but judging by the situation and the understandable terror reaching its breaking point within Tom, it looks very much like Attempted Rape.
- Expy: This incarnation of X seems to take after IT, being a sadistic Eldritch Abomination who kills for sport. He's also similar to The Demiurge, as a Psychopathic Manchild Eldritch Abomination with a raging God Complex who drags human souls to slavery a Prison/Torture Chamber world of gross matter away from the "Plemora".
- Eye Scream: If one looks closely, visible purple cracks are forming around X's eyes.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: An in-universe example, when Tom plays the game a second time (this time with his friends present) and X tries to reach his hand out through a projector in order to grab them.
- A God Am I: X still has this mindset, although he doesn't say it outright.
- Implied Rape: Fiona is described as being stripped down to her underwear, with unkempt hair and fur.
- Purple Prose: As typical with Sonic.exe and JCTheHyena stories, this story is full of it, even more than both the original creepy pasta and Round 2 combined.
- Let X Be the Unknown: "X" is the name of the titular monster, mainly because he is described as a nameless evil. He also uses "X" as a motif, having "X"s in his eyes, an "X" shaped scar across his chest, and the "X" pattern burned onto the game disc.
- Ominous Visual Glitch: The area around X’s entire body has a faint glitch-like effect whenever he's in the real world, almost like he isn't quite in-sync with the rest of reality. The teaser image for the Remake has an image of X's face glitching out.
- Timed Mission: Averted, unlike in the original. Instead of having a limited amount of time to grab someone's soul once he crosses over into the human world, X can now cross over as many times as he wishes and for as long as he wants.
