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KOOPALINGS: THE TEENAGE YEARS

by Eightane / Foxy Boy

CHAPTER XVII: UNATTAINABLE

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He tasted iron, but his Italian blood was still mostly-inside, nothing like the spray patterns on these grey-cement-walls-turned-red. His face grew pink, holding in the screams while two unblinking, passionless guards dragged him downstairs by each arm and his mauled legs hit the steps, one ankle then the other. The armoured's had no input, no advice, and nothing of joy, either, not even pride in their work. Then the descent to the dungeon wasn't a straight-there affair; why would it be, in this such castle. First, the mildewed, gore-flecked scene opened into catacombs... Wide halls, tray tables, some koopa men in scrubs, drenched in the scarlet of captives and enemies he hoped were dead, if they lost that damn much down here. Suffice it to call the place an expanse for something underground, and all gods and goodness help the man who looked at the grouted walls, between blood in random patterns and handprints in the same... Their scribbles formed mad writing from fingers too weak to style, minds too gone to spare the expletives or helpless accounts of their own ghastly fates, innumerable, varied. This gymnasial pain room had things unspeakable. Instruments, medical in shape and die-cast in pigiron, the cheap way to make what shatters skulls. He flinched more just passing by a dark, illicit 'surgeon' than on the cold, sore way down. Some had 'patients'. Patients lived free from anaesthetic, too; the clues were in one writhing on a table, muscle churned like a tetanus victim, and the gurgling of another's final rattle - death come to the dripping, stained reaches of a table near Mario's ear while they dragged him on - bringing hell to the dimension of this wretch's destined crypt.

It may not have been the lake of fire, literal, but Mario abandoned hope long before they left those fools behind, the prisoners and their visceral attendants. Who knew what they'd done to earn a treatment in the same vein as him, in the same reeking kill hotel. Through a set of double-doors, thin and plasticine, the two pulling him along trudged on. He finally let out a cry; a short one when the left door hit his shredded jeans, somehow got wrapped on them and caught on his bleeding leg, shoved into the open wound while they pressured it to let go. Only they pulled his arms harder, didn't reach down to unbind or fix the issue. His teeth gritted; this didn't please one guard, though more likely it was just that he'd made a sound period, so a gloved fist on the soldier rushed the plumber's head. Knocked out, he made little fuss on the rest of the path, escorted there as more a straw doll than a living, breathing, dying man.

Blurs and spots went before his eyes when consciousness returned. He was no longer on the floor, but his stomach, and a paper sheet, upon the width and plush perch of a real physician's exam lounge, where he'd go to be treated well in better places. Pain wracked his guts; he detected they'd took a pounding, and between when he lost consciousness under this aggressive watch 'til now, he was accurate. The two guards nodded to a lone figure; one hid his smile rather well, still with the tingle of the beating on his fists. He'd be rotating shifts soon, and his wife would hear the most amazing retribution story she never really wanted to. It was incidental; now, what Mario's gasping, marred body had to worry for stood above him, cornerside of a glassless, grateless room. Not even air circulation got into these four walls. Blurriness hung on to Mario, but the more it faded, the less he liked what it revealed. Someone short, male, green, but in the same med' scrubs as those assholes knee-deep in torturing outside; he could hear the shrieks, they must be just inside a door off that vestibule. This current doc had a differing hat; shaped high in front, it denoted authority, projected rank; Mario coughed, putting some of his red spray among the stains, the odd sprays from men who went to pieces before him, or were rendered piece-by-piece. It was a Pidgit... Odd to see, compared to what one may expect, low and diminutive even next to their star prisoner... But looking up to Mario, the dead yellow of his irises, a glow like bombs in a burning city's distance, put weight to the fear. Mario's lip curled; for the first time in ages, he not only felt terror, but fell under its crippling ways. The door was locked behind those guards, but it might as well have been missing. Nowhere would Mario go, beaten and ripped up all over, while the unscratched 'surgeon' crept on him.

He had a voice, too; ill timbre, seemingly inside Mario's head, like the tiny mouth of that Pidgit wasn't what stirred the foul air. But it was, and the gates of misery opened through what he had to say. "There, there. You took a hard knock or two out there. No matter, it's all over now." This had never sounded less ambiguous, in Mario's life or anyone's. He prayed... To himself, silent as dungeon mice beneath them, underfoot, he thought in Roman strains how he'd find the strength. The good doctor regaled him more, and in light shades intensified. "To wage a war on someone's home is not good, sir. Not a healthy sign. And we don't believe in answering back, there are no... Jarheads, canteen pissers, here in the study chambers. But I hear it's bad stewardship to let it go uncheked. We have to determine what went wrong. With, you and such." It may have felt suitable the doc was a bird, since every sentence Mario's dread state couldimagine crows black as night flying from his mouth. His eyes willed to go anywhere, and did... He immediately regretted that. The jamb of the door in and out of here, wrecked with claw marks, all sizes and shapes. Walls of pallid white held smatterings of green, which could not be blood, only bile. Next to some were flakes, and larger chunks, innards that dried to a hard treebark crust. And the screams... Outside, around them in more than a few directions, they were louder when that horrible face wasn't front-to-his, distracting him. This physician worked nowhere near alone. 'What... Could this place fucking be,' is the only thing anyone would wonder in this mad hell of a scenario.

He got an annswer... After one particularly harsh shriek, as outside, something unholy occurred along the lines of someone's throat being ripped out. And whatever it contained, organwise...

... The pidgit doctor cared not, and spoke again starting over this noise. "It's not my post in life to witness the price of a good fight. And I didn't sign up to hear howls of agony, and good men bleeding out." A shadow mved out from behind the bird; Mario nearly squeaked out his own terror scream, but seeing a tall bloody koopa with eyes he could see through, as if no life touched them, sound simply wouldn't come. Dr. Pidgit spoke more, brighter for a moment. "Which is why after much hullabaloo, I convinced them to transfer me here. You are not the best, but closer to a level fit for our worst. This, plumber." He had found Mario's face with his chest, gliding up on his wings, in gloomy hover; he now leaned in, and nothing good built the smell of this cretin's breath. "This is what I'm put here for. A man should follow his talents. Now then, I want to ask you... Before I discover what makes a fool like you tick, and trust me, that's happening... Who do you think would be happiest about this? To know it, and be the chief who drops the hammer on you?"

Maybe worst of all, in Mario's shattering mind, was not having the vaguest idea where the minion with flight was going with interrogations. Nor anything beyond. The attendant koopa... Now that he stared harder, Mario saw saw it was a boomerang bro... His eyes had weakness like the rest, deprived of blood, water, food... He'd been out then, and for how damn long, could he even know... But he looked back to the doc, and hearing a death rattle outside their chamber, knowing a man was lost in this den of 'study'. He nodded. Bowser, after all, would be behind what went on below his palace, which the Italian could only guess was this gulag's place. He talked, and it hurt his lungs, like one was punctured. "... A-Kk-kiing Bows'rr!!"

The doctor said nothing, though a spark flashed through his yellow eyes, and his assistant shifted, like expecting some blowup. Mario recoiled like a toddler scolded, feeling powerless as one by this moment. But the bird's shoulders somehow lifted the right way to communicate "Typical..." Without oral provocation. Then, on a huffed breath, there was suddenly a set of words to it, and Mario's feet shook with his toes, near cardiac failure if this kept on its worsening. "Makes sense you would go there, in all fairness. He put you in the dungeon yesterday. I had the wherewithall to intercept you, after the first night watch were tied up. That was utter coincidence, mind you, it worked out grandly though... I'm not here to tell you that, being further fair. You can breathe, young one. It will be a while before you die."

... The questions swirled, and overtook him. Young one? To what that implied, and what end he was sure to meet, callous and damned as any other enemy in here, that this good doctor apparently fancied, outside of Bowser's wrath... This wasn't the evil king's design? They... They were rogue... God as his witness and only help now, Mario lay hobbled, dehydrated, blood pressure low as his chance in overall ways.

"After we have findings, and apply them, you'll be free to go. It's that simple. This, Mario, you wouldn't get with the man upstairs."

Mario, discounting all traumas, had ears to work and perk when this hit them.

"Not to mention that his decadent streak stops at hanging you on a wall, antique chains, dawdling until he's ready to talk it out and waste your feeble self. I expect your loved ones will find you a changed man. That's the best scenario and the one you're looking at. A while, Mario, can be forty or fifty years. Where your genes, your environment and life ultimately take you. So it's not how I put it, I wanted... A chuckle, here and there. Something else you won't get with the king, eh champion?" I mean, he was right, after all... Mario shook out his notions, believing it all lies, from manipulatives. He could not deny, however false, it had a soothing air that he'd curse this hellhole for having none of, until hearing it himself.

The mystery doc spoke more, even less aggreved. "Your loved ones will find someone else with you, too. He's got family of his own where you're from. They'd never think they'll be seeing him again. I assume it's the least I can do for your trouble, and, honestly, Bowser's."

That would indeed be a goodwill gesture that helped more than just Ma... 'Wait... That'a can't be right,' Mario thought, the only way full sentences would touch him. A flake of organ fell from the far wall, at random... This would clearly happen with regularity, over time and added losses.

And his instinct - which is all it was, for Mario and the terrible place and bodily trial both crippling him, but for normal men would be normal deduction here - told him accurate. The doctor waved with his eyes, still flying idle and quiet; the attendant walked to the door, and there had been something prepared... Held outside the room, awaiting the proper moment. There was no slow ceremony bringing it... Two koopas handed it up to the dead-eyed boomeranger, he turned and brought it in. And flung it in.

The pile of it went all over the plumber. This, a flock of dessicated bones, had been a person... And it was no Dry Bones, an undead enemy vile and hard to best... Mario moaned, rather than scream, mourning who it was that had made the ultimate sacrifice for these insane fucking bastards.

"I wonder sometimes, when I think of the psychology... Barely a hair away from my own medical discipline, fella... Can a person recognize a soul they knew by remains, simply the feel or presence... or do those other things you're seeing there, the stench of flies, dried organs, squirming maggots, need a total absence to make that even possible. Look at me, another bad joke. I'll quit wasting everyone's time, Mario. Not that I don't have it, but it's tacky. You know I'm right."

Nothing even started to give the plumber notions of where this man headed. He soon wished that had still been true, seconds later.

"I give my greatest apologies. I understand KP was a great friend to you. Greatest sorrows. He didn't go in vain, I want you to know that."

Mario's eyes shot open, already watering, now perched to cry. The grief was instant and incalculable.

"We learned many things about how a defector works. Someone who'd know you as someone you aren't... Gonzales, I think he kept muttering, but with other things he said or did, the party was clear... To take up with you, helping or enabling. He knew deep down you were you, Mario. His wickedness sought you out."

The human lips jostled, trembled, holding what used to be a wrestling partner, man, koopa, friend. It was him no longer, but magnifying all tortures, it was not still and at peace. It pulsed. There was life this mass posessed, that of which ate him, the maggots, bugs and grubs that devoured him, turned him to more dust. Mario weeped, as tears mixed with red, streaks of dry blood that had never been cleaned, a day old.

The doc put no faith in mercy; what he said, Mario sobbed his eyes out over, gentle Italian blessings and last rites below the anguish, ruin of mind and heart. Skin flakes from KP scattered, bone powder on the floor like talc. "You see now Mario, when lives touch yours, what happens? Could you have the will now to think of memories, like that of a man who looked like he could be my brother?"

Mario's sobs hiccupped, but remained and grew again. Even losing KP didn't take him away from the grudge just now admitted to him. He clenched all over, through sobs. The attendant raised his hand, in an evident anger. A roach fried as it got inside the contacts of a light over them, and over the beating put to Mario, defiling and destryong bones and vile maggot-claimed tubes. On the plumber came fists and instruments, a beatdown became steadily more medical. Professional, exploratory. Absolute despotism.

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Over the hills of northern lands under Bowser's rule, three of his seven flew back to him. A slow journey, the clown car was on last legs that they'd just now really established. Almost falling out the sky was a good wake-up call; Iggy wouldn't let another day pass, there would be fixes for this emblematic ride. It did have autopilot for this, a self-guidance one could flip and it would head for the palace. Due to it, Iggy sat low in the cupola... Squatting, not enough room to stretch legs in here with two others along. Roy and Wendy stayed tall, taking in views. Not for scenery, for wariness. Hostiles had reached their realm, and like an oil spill in a sea it did not stay to a corner and filter its own damage.

Iggy's problem wasn't fear; certainly not of heights, with the many rides he'd taken in this air-ferry as a tot, clung to his dad's arm. Not even scared for his brothers. Honestly he couldn't think as well distracted. Equations, odds he banked on, they took concentration that just couldn't survive a living scroll of unwinding backdrops below. He had to know for peace of mind, what were those odds. If he had dice, and three sides meant they would perservere, and the other three meant the mission was suicide... What will it roll...

Wendy's foot shifted, her heel scraped. Iggy noticed, and with loving regard his face lifted. "Something the matter?"

She didn't even glance over, just put out an arm. Bracelets clattered as she pointed up; she needed him on his feet. Roy was quiet as a mouse; for this reason the nerd prince was already on edge as he lifted slow on wispy calf muscles, and stared out where Wendy showed by example.

The words just sort of dribbled out his mouth. "That's... What I never wanted to see..."

It meant he had fears, and what he saw now comprised a major one. Roy's silence made all the sense around. Looking on the stumps, what had been the great forest that hid stretches of virgin plain, no race or man had ever infiltrated. Cut down to nothing. This was a treasure, something even the greasy plumber left unspoiled. But ecology meant less than supplies. Biomes were subordinate to needs. Wendy, Iggy, they all three knew where those trees were now, carved down to the planks on catapults, the beams of battering rams, defoilated, dead. The three nobles weren't champions of wildlife, any of them, but the connection couldn't go ignored. These were the lucky ones, beings without pain. But their deaths paved the wrong way forward.

And forward the clown car flew, gliding past acres and hectares, tons of quantified loss. The land was scarred, and peoples were made to suffer. Plural. Wendy edged to the side, just a hair; she could better put her arm around Iggy now. He returned this sweet notion with his hand, on the arm she rested by his shoulder. Caressing her, it didn't truly help, but what else to do? And Roy shuffled; his boots scrubbed dirt under them, coming off more impatient than anything. It could be called the right emotion; no one was fulfilled while these things proceeded.

He had a comment though, finally. It wasn't what his dual company wished to hear. "Forty zillion treetops, turned to mulch. I wonder who needed that."

Wendy brought a curt response, quick as their pulse. "We did, lamebrain. Why would it be gone otherwise, it's our land an-"

"... Yeah. Not that simple." He'd caught her pause easy and knew it for what it was. A gap in civilization meant this was no stronghold of their father's. Anyone might plunder, though it was clear who could have wrought this. She kept her eyes low; didn't know why she started tearing up, they were just trees. But all gone. Mile after mile, and small clouds blew by at ground-level like fog. Not water, but sawdust. She had enough complexity that these details had lives of their own. Swirling patterns of dust, they were once a plant. Cut down and made to be what cuts further.

"You okay?" Iggy felt stupid the moment he said this... It wasn't what he liked experiencing. When she couldn't answer right away, he let his hand drift down, and put his body further out, ready to rest again. Wendy would let him, understanding, if not for the boom.

Roy twitched. Three pairs of eyes looked out to the edge of horizon, where land's curvature stopped their sightline. Billows of smoke, but so low they looked like white pustules on the skin of the Earth. Blisters from the scars... Or was this far enough to be outside the forest, or ex-forest. Roy didn't wait. He launched himself over to the console; Iggy took on a wild air, but moved little, only spraying exclamations. "No, you can't, we have to get back!! Dad needs to know, and this thing could fall out and bring our ends in a New York minute!"

Roy's face was harder stone than the castle's foundation. "Try not to mention that foul place, it gave us the plumber. If we die we're just in good company, but if I don't check that out and who's gettin' shafted, we go back war criminals." His hands stiffly moved controls; their autopilot disengaged and they were veered left, then turned straight toward smoke's origin.

Wendy lifted her arm again, but now with attitude, suddenly hearkened back to older shades of her. "Uh-uhhh, buddy, you're taking us home. We gave away our one gun, we're sitting ducks in this crapheap and I am NOT dying without that DVD of Tank Girl in my hands as they lower my casket, you got it!?"

They were morbid standards. Iggy stepped back, forgetting the low wall keeping him in; he hit his ass and half-shouted from the shock. She'd been heard, but not heeded. Roy groused on. "If I can save me, we can save them. Tell me I'm wrong for wanting to. Make me believe that, and we can swing it right back and be home in an hour."

Wendy's eyes flitted, hot under the collar. Iggy opened his mouth, but every good and valid protest just disintegrated at the Adam's apple, never made it to the tongue. They could look around, they could look at each other from downcast chins, it wouldn't block the facts.

She stepped over, by Roy, not impeding him. "Then they won't see us in an hour. Drive careful, if we drop to heck in this thing I'm still blaming you while we roast."

Roy's positive surprise made it through the lightwall of his shades, to she and Iggy. He kicked it into fourth, but with control in his large hands, the shakes and shimmies faded more and more, time easing their troubles. "If you blame me I still get the last laugh on this shitty carriage... There's gotta be a lake of fire for cars. Anyway fuck it all, let's ride!"

The speed increased. Shakes and trembles became the vehicle's more than his, a thousand percent. Wendy and Iggy held onto each other; he made the first move for comfort, but she latched on tightest. Treestumps and withered leaves blew by a kilomoter under them. The smoke-pimple became a true plume, and then another 'popped up' next to it, and as IT grew another yet was nearby and came evident. These were manmade fires, they had no doubts. And blazes weren't used to make wood into tools, it wasn't pigiron.

... They soon found, and regretted the discovery, this whole trio. They'd been sorrowful, the decimated bush combined with their present eating at them. This, expanding more with every second even as Roy leaned and jammed down the brake - hard - took on horrible dimension.

Iggy never saw the front lines. Wendy only had from inspecting the troops, when they stood fresh and in safe havens of the King's closeness, formal and in grand health. Roy's worst sights akin to this had been movies, the requisite gang pictures or combat biopics. The burning was a pile; still far in the distance, they could only guess the contents. But the grass became streaked green and red. carts that had been half-shaped things with wheels cleared up, into views of bodies. There were stacks. The screams were unending, continuous notes that shifted based on whose throat was skewered. Death came from those with hoods. Three miles out, and this uncloaked ship with three VIPs had a vantage point to the true costs, right as they were cashed out in ruin. Roy thought he'd stopped the car, but it just slowed to a crawl. And then, Wendy, who before had bickered towards going to sanctuary, slipped right in to the console and pushed Roy firmly back. It was his turn to be saved by the car's toprail, and Wendy's painted nails rocked the lever forward and sent them closer and closer.

Ever nearer, now Iggy felt sickness come on. Motions were crazed as Wendy flung them through the sky, on a path to hover high at the massacre. It was that, and so horribly more. The cerebral prince held his stomach; the carts had bodies alright, layers. They seemed organized... young, vibrant koopa men, bean people, goombas, eyes still wide though stone-dead and leaking red from throat slits and unholy gashes. Under them, arms with baubles and decorations; the women had been slaughtered, going to rest with their husbands, fathers, sons. At the bottom, when they zoomed over any one of these thirty to forty corpse-rickshaws just a bit closely, there were tiny hands, stained and pale. Just as gone as their parents, as any and all here. Iggy saw the proof of a particularly lazy Toadie; a small mushroom boy, a spy that neither force here wanted, but laid on top of a soldier pile by one of Kamek's own... Unblemished, save for the colourless skin, and lines at his wrist. Iggy didn't need to see the act to know they'd slit the child right there, crossways, the slow way to bleed out. Made him die gradual, more than so many others. As Iggy's tears began flowing, and he knew what he could never do was breathe life back in that boy's lungs, his face went in his hands, and his hands hit Roy's neck as he rotated to fall on the strength of his big brother. The bully, the heretofore-addict, wrapped Iggy in embrace, and didn't hold back. The latter felt warmth of wet tears on his nose and scalp. Two men in rubble but entwined, shutting out the world, reliance in the bleak.

This had been the edge of the woodland; the town by its impermeable side was newly part of history like the handsome trees they'd lived by. These were the people cut down; few had been soldiers. There was no guardpost, no embassy. Targeted for weakness. Toadies gave the unthinkable a form; closer they got, the more shrieks from young women run through with swords, garbled screams from men cast on by black spells that turned their skin to acid, made necks simply melt off their collarbones. Sorcerers in heavy robing tossed heads back and forth like volleyballs; the direst laughs rose through the melee. A small Toadie shanked a Birdo lass, her limbs shredded to sinew trails, not one square inch unmutilated. Bodies were defiled; larger magicians lifted dead men by their legs, entered them, raped the stiff holes of expired ones. No way to know whose eyes were more lifeless, the dead they mocked and molested or their own countenance, devoid of soul even from the high perch three foes looked down from. Wendy drove and watched a tiny one in ribboned clothes, with an old-style pistol, taking it to the poor, pleading survivors. Every cry for help got a blast of lead in the temple. He only came up to their knees, if they hadn't already been on them. The kid was no more than seven, but was Kamek's all the same, an unflinching soldier too young for peachfuzz. In the bough of death and serving it.

Wendy's teeth bared, a ferocity beyond rage. Tears filled the cracks between, streaming down her lipstick. Roy's heart did cartwheels as the car did the same, like a roller coaster on crack and no track, careening toward the mob of evil. They were spotted, of course. Wendy shifted levers, steered them around blasts of energy, lightning, the sky lit up with all the forces thrown at them. Magic thundered and barely missed. There were moments here and there Roy could have jumped in Iggy's arms - hello to the memories of the recent car trip with this same sister - but she dodged all, flew in to buzz the motherfuckers. The car lurched and went out of control when the buzz clipped a Toadie at the ear; propeller whipped through his head, carved half of it off like tiramisu. The dead crony fell as low and lost as those he'd helped kill, and this battle's first blood spilled to weeds and dirt.

The princess got it back straight, corrected oversteer and their jalopy-tank was back in business. She swung it around, a 180 that banked through the sky and held them sideways. Iggy's fingers pressed marks into the metal, and they'd be permanent. He hollered high, Roy squealed, and Wendy shouted like ten banshees had united to form one. She clipped another robed killer, his arm sailed clean off, a ten-yard toss while he collapsed and screamed. She didn't hike it up to the sky again 'til she reached down, grabbed one by the dirty cape and held him low. The hi-speed yank knocked him unconscious; he was the only lucky one, cold and not feeling when she dropped him and the impact tore him to shreds small as mouse tails. There was bedlam now. Toadies cast all their might and orbs of pure death at the nobles; they all knew who was dropping in. But Wendy's campaign was smiled on, or ordained... They touched no hair on her head, and the last each killer-grunt heard was her war chants, one after another, picked off even as they raised their wands. Roy spat down, despite the fright, and tagged one in the eye. It bent down and rubbed the welt; distracted by this, it traded fixing mild pain for its head, shorn off by another head-on butting.

Iggy hyperventilated; it energized him, Wendy's being right at home with retribution, lopping these scum like the trees they turned to body taxis, but this clownface couldn't fly straight now with any fix. The propellor blade was a gore sprinkler; blood and bits of entrails showered the braver Toadies, lurching in to try and kill, outwitted by a noblewoman who'd fly rings around the Red Baron. Roy clung to the side the same, but yowled down to the occultic terrorists, feeding them all he had inside. "HOW'S DOOM TASTE, FAGGOTS!? HAVE FUN LICKIN' SATAN'S SHITHOLE, YOU'LL BE THERE LONGER'N TIME!! FUCK YOU!! FUUUUCK ALL YOU, DIE FASTER!!! GODDAMN ANIMALS!! SUFFER!!!"

It's not like his siblings had even a lone issue with this right now, Wendy the least. As she broadsided Kamek's puppets, knocked them so hard spines disengaged from cores, her call to arms curdled blood in those not pouring it out. "FLIRTED WITH THE WRONG ROYALS, DICKBAGS!! YOUR HEAD SHRIMP WON'T KNOW, NO ONE'S COMING BACK TO TELL!!!"

Her words projected total loss, her people and control, a curse as loud as bullets from the child troops with their undergrown magic and guns to make up. NO one would compensate the leader; she made her claim full reality. Arrows steaked by, and the young Toadie with a bow hit the dirt and laid low. He knew no more about her skill than the rest of these bastards; she didn't need a good-condition ride to swoop it low and rip his side open with rocks, so hard he rolled on them from the hit. Organs poured out. Among the murdering scum, screams became less uniform war cries, taking on horror, the slow realization they fought in vain. Figures running in their vestments, tripping over their own lanky fabrics, ended one by one like an execution factory line. She found the tallest, and fastest; he'd been by the toad boy's body, and could well-be the heartless shit who granted him the agonied end. She had something special in store for him; however seldom she removed the pearls from her neck, a gift from Wart's Kingdom, its meaning went from beauty to utility. She yanked it off, broke the string, and on a dive, threw the clutch to the wind. Speed put dimples in those struck down; the ones hit in the head would not get up again, forever. Five more taken out, and all this reeked of memories. Good ones for her. Back in the groove her younger years instilled, getting more and more comfy, dodging easier and better their ammo. It didn't hurt there were so many less to attempt taking it down, that copter whose kill count shamed all tanks.

Roy had been the one to spit, and like his sister, things in his past had been latent but unforgotten. The fire in his eyes put a burn in his throat; he worked it up, like phlegm, but it was no such thing. In a matter of seconds, through his closed lips one could still see glow. They approached a group, the few foes who thought to stand tight and increase their odds. He focused like he'd rarely done, and aimed like a sniper. When his mouth opened, a fireball flew to greet the fuckers. It hit and detonated. Bowled down like pins, on fire and scalded in fresh lifeless rest. His fist pumped; Iggy hadn't seen but heard, and felt warmth at his cheek, so no doubt of what happened. Looking up at the giver, even his outstanding brain failed to bring back when last he'd seen this happiness, Roy's smile without a speck of lies, baggage, malice to family. He chucked Iggy's shoulder; the skinnier bro soft-socked Roy's belly back. Whether they die here, a week or ten decades forward, this would stay with them.

The last cart to be seen was loaded down, but the only one without the dead atop. Sitting low on its wheels from metal weight, an armory. Wendy didn't curse again out loud, but to herself now, wishing she'd seen this so much sooner. Driving the sky-version of a Pinto, debilitated in blood and leavings of the evil killed, it was the sitting duck that made them the same. Stupid damn soldiers piling more atop it, so transparently going to light the fuse and wait for her to take the bait. They'd be robbed of the pleasure. She knew what Roy had done, and smiled back all while guiding this lemon of a kar, lining them up. Above the fracas by much more now, and Roy hocked it up again, bigger than before. It sailed through smoke and blood-scented air, and though the Toadies knew instantly their mistake, the time to flee was miniscule. Before any could run free of the blast radius, the lower-left took a full flaming smack, easily enough to turn the whole wagon to pure explosion. Limbs didn't fly off, no heads or glasses or beaks hit the far dirt. There would have had to be something left for that occurrence.

Iggy plunged his finger in his ear, pained by the boom. Wendy's hair streamed back, and her acrid smile made movie demons look demure. Roy simply stood quiet, blown away by his own deed and it even being possible. He would take minutes to process this, the last of the atrocity wiped clean from the land. If only their land, as in the entirety; but this valley was in peace, for the none who stood after. Absolute loss met with absolute loss.

She shoved the lever to 'ascend', and flew high and far, her face mixing courage and completion with grief. She fulfilled vengeance, all she could. Her heart sank fast as the copter rose; this was why the skills were latent in her, prior to now. The price was the squeeze in her very heart, all the unarmed turned to souls and gone from here. Even those without flesh, across the decimated woods. And the wildlife, who'd surely been among the canopy...

... But now was for rejoicing. She screamed once more, forcing tones of sheer gladness, only good channeled. Their munitions gone, their advancement shredded, Kamek's own were in low stock and with days numbered. A victory unparalleled, but the trio pushed their luck something fierce. Only now did she feel the sting on her arm, glancing down to a bloodied streak, where a spell winged her. It felt cold... She shook it and ice crystals poured out in shiny powder. Any closer on her and she'd lose that hand to a hard freeze. But it escaped warm and useful, not imperiled by her empire bracelet rolling down it and back in the kar's limping airshudders. It would rub her wound raw before they made it back, but serviceable, and first aid would fix in full.

"S-sis, you see...?" Iggy stammered, not sure if she'd come wise to her wound, still pale as some of the fallen behind them.

She nodded brief and swift. Her foot came up, and stomped. Platforms clacked on the floor, and as she went to stomp again, Roy's feet moved back as she went closer to his toes. He'd sure as hell let her stamp out aggression this way, or any way, long as they made it home, so slim a chance it was. Red spatters, even puddles trailed behind them on the miles and miles of Grass Land. For the bully prince, his biggest inkling right now was a new fright... The sinking feeling, if they lived to see Dad, they were also in line to explain stealing the kar. He'd let the day's warrior, his sis, handle that.

******************************************************************************

Under flecked ceiling tiles, harsh-scrubbed light fixtures, every nurse and surgeon felt their lifespans at stake. In this 12x20 box of a room, what lay on their table looked like scraps eviscerated, leavings from a gory feast instead of something with life, a being on death's door. Morton's breath came at the help of a tube, run to a tall machine sequestered to a corner. Male and female koopas in nurse scrubs stepped over it with surefooted grace, knowing the price for one mistake. It was the terror that came to them; this grotesque burn victim held their fates in his crisped hands. His strength failed, sinew and brawn fried under wrinkled wounds; it could not be what put them in danger upon some rapid goof. They praised in silence - and depended on - the great king's mercy.

"Mark first incision. Peeling off outer tephra." The head of this expedition, Albatoss with quills blue-black as polar twilight 'blooming' from his white collar, had his own way. 'Tephra', a volcanic term reappropriated, made the gruel and ruined skin less sickening; he sank his gleaming silver scalpel in, and skin fell away, as if scissors run through a wrapped gift. The folds into itself left pockets and sacs of trapped red, the fluid still around in those killed outer layers.

The younger nurse, a man of twenty-four, blinked his watering eyes; no one called it tears, and neither would he. Into a plastic bucket he collected the skin, useless and evacuated. Underneath was a rainbow of gashes and contusions, fresh scarlet pouring from one by Morton's ribcage. Three of the four nurses jumped on it, sutures and clamps slapped down, precise and slapdash. Morton's body jerked, restless with agony in his coma; One of three doctors squeezed his older nurse's shoulder, firm, and she ensured the others found gentler means. The prince stopped slow-writhing.

"Sew it. Get me sterilizer, now!" The bird-in-chief stayed on this, at the chest area; One place they couldn't afford losing pressure. Grafts were brought out by the second surgeon; measures taken to find ample spots, not there to cut and waste a trace of donated hide. Crucial betadine slathered on, vitals checked by each one of them so constantly the screen was out of sight half a second at max. They were a well-oiled machine, and the real contraptions saving him from lung collapse, hypotension, organ failure, they might be what determined if the next day had no noble deaths, or one and nine professionals by proxy. The third surgeon in line coped only fair; sweat clogged his nose, the tiny near-invisible mouth, he sniffed and remedied. His was to fix the legs, and from the giant strips hanging off, unsalvageable, he had hell before him, making this work where if their man survived he'd still walk as well. None of them had time to think of what occurred if they sent Morton home a cripple, but they knew anyway. Hardly a change in the obituaries. Hands as pinpoint as an eagle's strike snipped the hunks and jettisoned them to the plastic bucket, a pail quickly filling up with scorched tissue. The smell filled the chamber, like seared pork, and none of them would eat for maybe days now.

They ran around, hand-over-hand, synchronized in no time just to make it happen. Filling holes with gauze and absorbents as the old and dead was disposed. Pulling bandage lengths through gaps between surgeon's arms, pouring isopropyl under stark lights that showed the bubbles rise from cauterized gashes. Morton writhed again, but at this there was less and less concern. His reaction meant his nerves worked, that damage was measurable. In his unconscious shock, they'd have no idea what he felt, where.

Their foggiest notions still wouldn't spell it out for them, but two rooms over, a similar case where the subject lay failing, heart weak, body wracked with burns. And his restlessness looked much the same... So much so, it came on identically, the same moments. Tom made more gutteral noise, the team over him as swift and scared for all involved. They'd been told who he was to Morton; for once, they knew news before the one and only himself. Tom's arm jerked up as they laboured to cut out a problem at his elbow's inner bend: amidst wrecked veins and fibres, part of a broken bone had sheared through the outer 'shell' of flesh. A nurse with a little less experience than some, tried bending it back down to ease their process. This mistake sent Tom's voice to a garbled wail of deep wordless pain.

... Back with the Albatoss, for the first time in ages he stood startled, his temperance paused by a shriek from Morton. They'd barely done anything unique in the past moments; it was like something brought him to cry out from beyond them. None of them knew, no matter if they had belief in that kind of empathy. And the work escalated, soon the Beezo had two legs in wraps and secured grafts, skin they prayed would 'take' and bind itself to the canvas of lost layers. So many things were their last hope. Any one of them going ineffective was no option.

Clear drips hit the steel of the table under Morton's head, diluted orange by blood and remnants of sebacious glands decimated. They could breathe some relief knowing the tear ducts still worked; two of them felt heavier for seeing it though, a lump in the throats where they swallowed stress under duress. Tom's main surgeon was tall, gaunt, a Cobrat with no kind of resemblance to a certain Colonel, neither brash nor maniacal, nor late and great, and that last one he fought now to protect. Snippy his words flew as his help tended Morton's love, finding more trouble with dislocating strips of first-degree burn, thick skin and strong frame making it that sort of chore. They were fast and meticulous, the nurses under this snake, but at a price. Puddles formed inside the tote where they threw his lost chunks; he'd suffered more severe burns, but in this speed he lost formidable blood. He tossed and half-turned on the table, the nurses kept him static, but vitals were at stake. Heartbeat of 50 BPM, down to 45, back up to 49... Sinking to 42... Cobrat ordered injections, administered techniques to invigorate the heart. They managed Tom up to 52, 53, but without constant perfect timing, or more compatible blood, which wasn't eternal, losing him was very real in chance.

Morton jerked around, seemed to tussle with the table or the men in scrubs holding and placating him. It now took no less than two of them keeping him secured; they lost valuable hands but gained stable room. He lifted up from the chest, with a tender scream, and they almost heard a word within it. Again they hadn't dug into a sore or sheared off any more scaled hide, so it was anyone's notion.

Morton lived in a blackness outside this building, this procedure, and his mind's eye had the grim, addled shape of a hat, floating in a void, his faltering mind's best effort. Dreaming of it, by itself... Then taking shape below it, a figure. Skin that started white but turned to green... Something could be a moustache, but twisted itself to a crust, emerald scales... Hair beneath the cap wasn't brown or black, but of the fire of ten suns... And the nostrils, growing out, until the fatherly shape that inhabited his dream wore the 'M' above it so plainly, and with glimmers... There came a blue colour, ice, forming on the tip of this poufed plumber's cap, and over the face of a king it traveled, freezing solid the dragonlike eyes, snout and fanged sneer...

... The dream was altogether too much. Up he bounded, flopped on the table, a beached fish, and they struggled him back into submission. Yells around the surgery room, grabs of more sutures, another vial of blood for the IV, rushing for their very future. The EKG was hectic, pulse at 120, pressure 130 over 95 despite such rampant fluid loss. Albatoss had never seen the like. Crossing himself, praying to the saint of his reverent choosing, he patched up the remaining holes where none should have been. His perspiration he licked into his beak, which chattered with a life's worth of anxiousness.

Cobrat banged his fist on the washing counter; his team did all they could, but the writing on the wall was too cogent. Half of Tom's weight lay in pails or bins, and the deep scarlet lakes there rippled with their bootsteps running laps around to save this man. Pulse at 33, pressure far too low. This snake knew what could leave brain damage, and how that point was passed six minutes hence. A miracle would be if this VIP lived, not if he lived with no handicap. It was all but tasteless to wish now.

Morton defied his state, his throat's condition. The nine who held him in shaky balance, the three who now physically steadied him, heard the sole syllable, the name. There was no rapport between rooms, they didn't know who the 'Tom' was, that this prince called for into the gloom of colourless noise, the nightmare his mind lay slave to in this medical sleep.

One man present in neither room, disallowed, thought deeper and deeper. Todd stayed to the window; his ears faintly picked up Esmerelda, and Ludwig next to her in fretting diatribe, working out between them what all was come to pass. Ludwig's painkillers dulled, and his lucid ways came back with power and a wince, speaking loud just so he wouldn't howl with his arm's ache. She knew he didn't shout at her but the volume difference made few things much easier. The thoughts inside Todd, no matter whether close to this or not, weren't mixing well with the doubts, or extant fear. He took one last glance out the window - soldiers lined up, many of them cleaning grounds and bodies, less of them carting the living wounded - and made his choice.

He moved to walk, and walked to exit, past a princess who looked up just in time to engage him. "Todd, can we please remain?... I just think it's best if... We have ourselves."

She meant of course unity. And he knew everything of why it would help... But not for him. "If I can be anything here, I'll be back that second. Not leaving. You can find me in the cafè. " And he offered that with dead-levelness. Whatever he felt, it didn't show through a single tone.

In her mind, she protested, but elegance gave her head a lady's nod. With her blessing, he departed the stuffy room, looking one last time on Ludwig. Seeing no judgement in the prince's eyes, but getting all the same from inside. He stifled as he strolled, regret and its relatives. For now he'd make his rumbling gut the star of his world.

Fifty yards of hall and two flights of stairs led him down to the eatery, the same clinical, drab experience of any hospital 'restaurant'. The smell of unsalted grits, egg substitutes, wafted over the dining area. Fighting urges to imagine Morton, or his other half, in their war against expiring, he thought instead of expired milk, another faint frangrance in this place while he stepped into the line for ordering. Fit between a Snifit with a cold and a Fryguy in overalls, he blocked this out too and thought of the club sandwich and sausage that would hit the spot at this time of day. Deli meats and a stank, spiced link or two, an old standby in his family. The Snifit coughed through his order but completed it, and Todd stepped up to put his in, detached as before. He swiped his card, took his number and navigated to the broad, open seating. Twenty chairs of maybe fifty or so, occupied, so not hurting too bad for space. He pulled out one he agreed with, bent at the sneaker-tongues to wedge himself in, and... Spotted two tables down, an unlikely sight.

... Back with Esmerelda, the love of her life had new grasp on his own, or such a lease on speech. She grasped his arm, in a mild awe for the string of words he issued. "It barely hurts, just an inconvenience. Did zey say zey'd keep you up on how Morton's progressing?" No pauses for the pain of his arm, just pitch warble with no effect on speed. "I'd s'ank you since I don't recall, I vas too busy over him making it vere I... I'll remember. God as my vitness, it von't be unavenged. I have to heal, but zat plumber must d-"

She made his arm go white, pinching in so slight with her nails. "Love, that is for the soldier class, not you. Please respect that." The look in her eyes, down to his, said 'that' meant 'her'.

He... Heeded unconditionally. Hate inside of him festered, but subsided, in the cool boughs of her favour. This is not to say he calmed... There was much to say, the more his moments solidified outside of painkillers. "I saw through ze gristle, I, I apologize profusely to say it like zat. He vas avake enough for feelings. It vas fear. I know him, darling, he never held zat for ze plumber. Even if ze M' did zis to him... He isn't meant to be here. I know zey sneaked him in. Did you ask Todd vat happened to get him on zat table?"

She hardly knew what to say; the quick succession of thoughts weren't overwhelming, but much to process. "No, I never thought to interrogate them. Dear, why would I?"

"It's alright, not a statement of blame. But vat he'll do to zem if he finds out, and I refer to father. We can't assure how long it takes for vord of zis to reach him, but ve both know it's on ze vay as ve speak. No vay it couldn't be. Do you fathom what lay behind zat curtain?" It wasn't meant to be funny, and only nervousness made her chuckle. He understood and judged not, and continued. "Morton knows, if he's here he's dead. He can't go, zey von't let him, and zey put him through rigorous repair just to maybe get a bullet in ze h-"

Her reflexes were prime, and promptly bapped him on the brow with two fingers. He didn't find this cause to stop. It wasn't known by him, the King had seen the arrival. Prevention was far too late.

"If you believe I'm wrong, I'll relent. If you see nothing behind zis, I'll let it fly avay. You can't, can you?" He almost seemed confrontational; she wasn't used to this, and a thin veneer of scowl crossed her just a brief second. But she heard him out, patient and long-tending. "Because you know, all ze times you didn't see him here, zere vas unspoken tomes. Very few know how deep it runs outside Vendy and my brothers... Perhaps a few beyond, from years past..." He, his head and eyes left focus on hers for the first time in extended whiles, but slipped back to keeping her front-and-center. "Ve have to protect him, dear. Few things I can do. But be vatchful... King Dad isn't ze greatest stealth, but his arms reach far. I only ask since... I know you vere staying by me, so you vould be here already."

She nodded through a fresh coat of welling tears. They were stifled, noiseless in the clean room.

"I never... Quit hope. One day he'll be right."

This, she didn't catch for its meaning. But had took to heart his request, as he lay back and rested, troubled by pain but dealing. She knew her man; sensing he didn't want compromised again, she perished thoughts to call a nurse for morphine. He could certainly have any and all he wanted, heir apparent in their care. He would soldier on, having both mitts on his brain as it were.

... In adjoining rooms patients heard the faint cry, closer to the operating wing. Albatoss directed his team, his own hands on a clamp, keeping vital blood around distended sacs at the lungs. They weren't designed to fill with blood this way, they would have to be drained and kept from bursting, close to aorta. One of the nurses uttered curses, a menagerie when she dropped a salient piece of leg skin. The nurse and surgeon closest to her rolled eyes, more scared than prissy; they had only a spare or two for that area. The next was fetched over sounds of him in a mourn while out cold... What they rarely heard, honestly howling as he dealt with pain or unholy thoughts trapped in drug-induced slumber. It was lost on them just how much of the second option this was. Truly in his mind, he struggled to claw out of black space, no bust of his fright incarnate now, but a void without mass and time, he clawed at the table itself to escape. The taller nurse koopa was rapid in slamming them down, the hands stained with red; almost too swift, and the Albatoss cleared his throat, making it rebuke in that direction; a talent most surgeons picked up over years ascending. Experience would serve him well; this patient, as it looked for now, would live; scarred to untold lengths, and some would heal, some simply wouldn't. Time decided what would stay rough and telling, and what would fade and flatter, that and the grade of this man's immune system. It was a shame he couldn't find peace in sleep, while they worked to make this so. It truly looked like the prince was fighting to run in his coma, like being pursued...

... Many feet more distant yet from heir and wife, the other team slaved over this man. Most had no idea his identity. Only those who saw them come in together - and read tabloids discouraged by the regime - knew this casualty's likely ID. And he lost blood still, and his pressure barely jumped to better plateaus. 38 BPM wouldn't sustain this man, as it hovered now. Brain damage followed. Organs could fail in groups. A needle went into his heart; adrenaline, and this would get the body working where it needed to, tricking it into gear. The Cobrat knew this was cheating death, and like a pinball machine tilted, all the unnatural means would only go so far before shutdown was a given.

He pumped in more donor blood, leaving lines of IV into Tom from all sides, almost one for every frantic worker who grafted, tied off, did their absolute best. Prayers whispered through them, the few who believed. This man was either theirs, or God's, too soon to tell.

In the drafty reaches of the cafeteria, Todd tried not to be too distinct, not staring on Bret like he could have. A quick look and then away did just fine for the first moments; he had a meal to eat, after all, so this served him to think and be occupied. Thoughts came fast... Far more of them were about what he'd saw upstairs, it just felt wrong to be wrapped up in this chance passing. He hoped Bret didn't have someone to see after, himself... This place housed anyone's sick or broken for miles, anyway...

... It was his good fortune to catch the bullet points, what Bret was sitting there just muttering. His ears were young and sharp, plus Bret was never famous for an indoor voice. In fact it was half-shameful how many around him turned their head, heard him work through it one stressed thought at a time. "... Yeah, he'll be back... I laugh at that bullshit... Just trying to be nice, spare us huh?... Yyyyep... When I hear they smeared him with a spirit bomb or what-the-fuck, I'll be laughing... Goddamn... Glory days... He's got 'em, THAT'S locked down!!"

Annoyance swept around him, faces that spited him, then turned away, either having company or phones to browse. Todd centered on his bacon club, and the Polish wiener he had as 'garnish'. He didn't have to wonder who Bret had weighing on him. But he trusted Larry to bring him home. And trusted the skater himself, the gumption that sunuvabitch hid. He showed a smirk, it loitered on him, and then opened over a large bite of lettuce, bun and chicken breast.

******************************************************************************

High in the most regal room, the first royal heart sank low in its ribcage. Forlorn notes were not what filtered into Bowser, but rather images he held to, snapshots of the long-gone. A large leaf fanned him from the left; Shyguys were ignorant of the figure in his mind, dressed in silks, elegant as she walked an outer grounds path. Skin green as the finest opal, nose pert and so soft when touching his... These things he saw in half his children, casting him back to her. He'd never answered for himself why these pictures came back in heavy times. Clutching a Tom Collins now, he leaned down and set it by the throne, barely sloshed. His help showed no expression - hidden in their bags as ever they were - but for a tiny tilt of one's head. When would their monarch refuse his calming ritual? And place it down, easy and gentle?

But the lines at his eyes brought no nosiness. Throne servants wouldn't interrogate him for fuck's sake; they enjoyed life continuing. He felt sudden needs to filter, so explaining the control. Today had been fraught, an old visitor who made himself a guest, and reports came to him that his children set out in ways he didn't clear and hardly would. He sighed, wondering in silence if they couldn't have took the damn clown out earlier and landed on the Italian, crashed that piece of shit and killed two birds with one stone. It might get them thrown and scrubbed, but who cared, if they defied him like this-...

... No, that wasn't kingly of him. His eyes went low, lips stiffened. A father thought these things, but that's where it went to die, not be made orders. He picked up his cocktail again, intending to down it fast, as he could so often do before. He lifted, stuck it to his lips, but only took a fourth of the contents. The greatest sight today was needling him; 'great' in sense of importance, as there'd been no good news. An hour before, looking down to a face on the field in thick of war, he'd missed the two eyes, closed and flecked with blood, but the clothes, the body, he knew. Morton might make it, and either way lay in the hospital, privy to time and doctors from the finest stock. God help him if this was the worst of it, by Bowser's torn measure.

He sought the ceiling; tracing swirls in its alabaster, ivory couplets leading down the room's array of columns... He could sit on this chair a thousand years and always know what it fostered. No way to separate the decor, the rank-and-file below him; they were making up for this. Every deed and high privelege granted him, just cushioned the blows, and when his own sons left to defend it...

... He darted up from the throne. Shyguys asked a halfhearted question, what he'd want or desire. He held out the massive hand and they at once were still. He spoke, though, and as if they're no subjects, more like... Acquaintances. They were spellbound, seeing him go casual; never thinking he had someone on his brain who didn't wear his wife's linens, as he praised her. "She never left us. If it comes to ruin, and we go the way of the dodo... I'd have a mess to call ours, and my own. Yet there's inscriptions the palace over, on books and plaques... They'd never forget her being part of me, that much is impossible..."

"S-sir?" The shortest Shyguy halted him, sounding less than adult but fully unsettled.

"... Ah, don't worry, little one. I have lands to run and it's not mine to step off the deep end." He gazed to the floor, and his peaceful reserve grew to unplaced frustration, a spark in his eyes that grew. "They would have me punish Wendy and two others for the kar's theft. Some minutes ago, when the paraguard made haste up here and murmured to me? He took pleasure in telling me what they'd done." On this the spark of ire expanded; the Shyguy child listened to what sounded like a seminar for loyalty. "It put a smile across him, that I might beat sense into my own progeny. Maybe that's what he thought, that I'd solve it like that. They always want to believe it's the same." He started hobbling, a hitch in his step from sitting uncomfortable half the hour. Approaching the high porch, he turned head to the help. "Should it be?"

It took twenty seconds for the poor kid to realize he'd been asked for real. When he set to stammering, almost getting out his answer, the king's mitt held up and stopped him again. It dropped, though, flaccidly from lack of will, and dangled by the king's side. Bowser spoke, recalling how Morton looked on that stretcher. And how another poor fool of a soul had felt, hanging from his claws this same day. Ire melded with principle, and finding drive, became something darker. More like what the peons and pawns would say they saw on the regular, this zip code: a king handling it less than well. "Of course it should. Is it going to happen?... Not very god-damned likely. Let's see the spawn of the king trotted out before the droves, hooray! Let's spit on the ones who wear jewels, and sip coffees, they fit the straw men we build and shape as the day's easy targets! And mine are patrons to miles of country, they have cushy bullshit to fall back on!! Hip hip hooray, junior Bolsheviks!!"

Saying it made him freeze. He'd been the one to come up with it, but comparing them shot fear through his entirety. Just knowing there were some nearby to hear him, even those sworn to give and serve, it can always be the closest and you don't know... He pushed these thoughts far out of him. But what replaced them, he hadn't counted on.

Why did the clothes stick closer than hers. He had just seen the jackass today, but even before, it was always accessed in his grey matter with vividness her memory failed to bring. The wretched cur was doomed now; in his gulag, under care of the extremists he dared not touch nor call, so long as they were basically his. On his side, the one position he could sleep with them holding. But Mario could die, be torn to ribbons, reduced to fine red mist in some bloodsport-torture machine, as was their way down there, but... It would all be vivid still. In his retinas the image seared, down to the 'stache.

... He only now flung a growl, and an example that shook the very bags over fanners and his food concierge. Quickly, the latter scribbled on a notepad, tiny nubs of hands under wrapping that jotted a 'kitchen ticket' for sourbratton, what would cool the savage gut on many given days. It was torn off, the Shyguy tore away to run for the kitchen, and this left the fan-Shykid and his older partner the only two around. Bowser stomped once, at half-strength, and they vaulted a foot off the floor. He had a single bearing, spoken as they picked themselves up. "Morton will see me in time. At this crossroads, being what it is, my daughter needs me more." This, he didn't send out with premise of supporting her. What she needed was not edifying; her long hair had flowed back from the copter as his watchmen had seen, her exit and return. Nerd and bully were accomplices, the deed was clear-cut.

But what hadn't been so known, a winged Goomba carried in on rising gusts. Updrafts helped him to this high perch, from outside where soldiers had been 'mopping' the grounds, removing all trace of the loss and destruction. So he wasn't out of breath, delivering a message to the king; he flew, announced himself and hovered by the king's ear. The Shykid had seen his share of bad news delivered, how it wore on Bowser. Bad days would see him smack down the messenger, fling him to the floor with a slap or a closed fist. Today... The Goomba was thanked, and his head put into the palm of Bowser. He could manage a "Wh-what, your Highne-" and no more, being whiffed back and flung at the wall like shotput.

The Shyguy squealed. Bowser had limits, and after time spent in cool thought came a break of the chill holding him together. The wall's shroom-shaped blood spatter was an easy fix, some plaster and paint and a piece of wallpaper. The Shyguy boy was not so easy of one, standing there with knees knocking, refusing the stream of piss that tried to leak from him, scared beyond thought.

Ex-messenger's corpse rolled on its side, skull flattened like a top. Bowser looked down at his doing... These were memories of their own type, and they helped. In fervour and with hotter blood, he raised his arm to point, and point to the great outdoors he did. "Apparently my worst and brightest are fucked like so many of you, so let's raise a toast to ESCAPE!!" He had no glass in his hand, but made a pointer a fist and smashed it to a column in a second's breadth. It cracked, the ceiling turned to dust above it, and the older Shyguy did wet his baggy pants. They knew what probably happened.

"I won't be sending sentries." This, they didn't expect. He talked in gravelly judgement. "Precious little has my trust right now. I can lean on myself, and that's where it ends."

He offered no more in the way of explaining... And the biggest shock of all, he marched out, the throne area to the stone stairs, to the rest of the castle, eventually the gates. No armour was put on. Guards ran after him, beseeching him in this time of war, with his decimated troops, the rest of them clamoring, damage control or sent out to die. This is to make no mention of the factions at war under this roof, fistfights, shoving matches from the subjects' unrest, violence in small measures all around. He gave no heed and no change. Out, in only his robe and shining crown, to find the plumber who'd escaped.

It was just too bad that Mario hadn't broke free. And the trust that Bowser felt had failed him, he was more correct on than ever. Dejected, ushered out by ill news from a traitor he killed, ignorant. Taking from the heart of his home even trace stability he lent by default. The palace - by one deed - became its dark side.

To be continued...