# Koopalings: The Teenage Years (Chapter Eighteen)

Author: Eightane
Tags: Bowser, Drama, Koopalings, Lemmy, Mario, Morton, Wendy, iggy, larry, ludwig, nonsexual, roy

Sometimes it seems to become one person's job, shouldering the day's worst doings. A member of our fair house learns it their assigned way.  
  
Jus' read and have at it~

KOOPALINGS: THE TEENAGE YEARS  
by Eightane / Foxy Boy  
  
CHAPTER XVIII: SECOND TIME AROUND  
  
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    Another day's worth of rations expended; Larry wiped his brow, the dust from a few mini-devils had stuck to the skin. Another day of water gone, too, but this was the easy part. Walking the stream's course, tracking close by, meant more was just a bottle's swish and a campfire's sterilizing later. He held up well, for all the commando-shit this worked out to. Lemmy was... Stable. His level arms had his guns and the BFAG of Iggy's gifting. A was for Acid.   
  
    Larry's twitch in his dirtied brow was for the shake, when Lemmy stepped boots into a pothole and nearly dumped the firearms on a liquidy peat ground. The former bleated a critique by reflex. "Slow with it, chief! Those things can go off when you so much as cough, Dad gave us no-safety units."  
  
    "I know, dude." The annoyance from the skate freak was rich. "It's not like I tripped on fuckin' purpose. Get too big for your camo's again and YOU can carry the Teflon... Ender." He hadn't the slightest what to call that launcher they inherited the previous day. 'Ender' had a nice ring to it.  
  
    So did Larry's ears, when something flew past them.  
  
    He leapt on Lemmy, forced him to the ground. They weren't about to be picked off by God-knew-what kind of sniper. Coming down on his brother's back, the guns wedged between them, and neither man escaped without some part of its metal digging on his flesh. Lemmy howled out in pain, and more concerned with his own focus - that which had missed the sound Larry caught, in spite of trying - he reacted to the moment's tension. Reason was severed for a moment, while he turned, rolled Larry off him, and lunged. There was a struggle; two guys in green-and-brown on the soggy moss and reeds, sinking half-in as they tumbled, even one or two punches dealt while Lemmy fought the protection he'd overlooked a need for.   
  
    Larry finally outstrength-ed his older bro, and overpowered the push from Lemmy. Skater boy was now pinned down, his back to the cold muddy cushion. "Are you fuckin' lost it, man!?" The sentence mixed two expressions; it was what happened in the heat of this. The next phrase out of Larry made better of itself. "Guess you didn't hear the fuckin' shell by our ears. And that's not koopa type I mean here."  
  
    Then, Lemmy answered in a way that surprised and terrified. "I did. It's a false flag, those fruits wouldn't make tiny li'l lead ordinance when they can set fire to a forest with a fart. Either sound buffeting, or they ricocheted somethin' like it and we're sitting damn ducks lookin' like we're actually doing shit. You want that to be how we lay to rest?" He looked around at the vastness of grass, trees in patches on the high ground of wetlands. "... Out here?"  
  
    The wide eyes of Larry showed bloodshot boulevards. Nothing about his inner struggles masked themselves, but he was numb to the whole of that. "Exactly what I look out for. Maybe I'm right, or maybe I goofed, I'm on your side... Bro, I'm on it." Lemmy's scowl had been developing, and this got to Larry, not any tension within. He went harmless as could be with his expression, wanting peace where he could find it. "Don't start lettin' accusations fly."  
  
    ".. Fine. Sahh-ry. Just don't play den-father to the boomsticks, they're for us. No matter what dad wants of you to make up for... Stuff."  
  
    The mood went sour. To hear Lemmy acknowledge that, the intent of King Dad and what Larry was atoning for, hit hard as a real bullet could have. Larry said little more. They just got about sinking down. It was light torture, crawling chest first on chilled moss and waterlogged pits, never knowing if a mound of green sprigs hid firm ground or an inches-deep puddle that soaked to the tits. They carried waterproof field packs; the load of kilograms on their backs were designed for stealth, and still likely stuck out to airborne foes like a storebought target. If the source was over them, they'd be engulfed in fire, or blizzard, or some other montrous end, before they even knew what hit them.  
  
    Two brothers' eyes went to every place and direction they could swivel their heads. Finding no sign of enemy in the blue above; nothing hiding by the trunk of willows or cedars in the mini-groves. Nearby, at the edge of grass, the river flowed so serene.  
  
    ... Flames decimated cattails. From the riverbank, at 3 o' clock, heavy plumes of red flew at their heads. The aim went high, and Larry's hair fell sideways, scorched in a hole burning out until it smoked to nothing in the sticky swamp. He lurched back. Lemmy rolled ahead, and threw out his guns right as he sank into the lowest place for miles. His nose and all below it vanished in the murk. Larry now lay behind him, chin at the edge of this sinkhole. Far more vulnerable, as he rolled and kept moving, in ways that would seem insane to most. Clawing at grass far out from him to draw fire. Standing when that thankfully worked, long enough to see the firing line. He dived back in cover before the menace shot more sinister beams. Their magic dickhead was in the water, up to the robe's waist. Wrinkles fluffed in curtains of blue, splashed with trout water, beneath the toadie foaming at his mouth. These princes would die.   
  
    In his sights, Larry danced and flopped like a broken carnival game. Misdirection taunted his fire. His incantations changed; the effects switched to ether. A green gas, no mortal chemical makeup or assignment to the periodic table, but a mark of his ancestry. Spirit's Estus. One time hitting either of these goody-good retards, and their royal faces would melt from bones, and then the bones themselves become slurry that would sit in these swamps and settle as just more for the growing peat layers...  
  
    He saw an iron muzzle poke out the reeds. This was the last he saw, ever, as Larry's finger punched that trigger and sent hot lead through the forehead of Kamek's scout. All thought and life extinguished, and the blood fell with the body, into currents that tugged at him, then swept him slow and unfeelingly away. Larry went to his feet, no fear or reservations after now. That kind of wound made the scout into nothing more than a stick, carried by the river to either a dark, deep sea, or to get caught and wedged on bankside boulders and picked to tatters by the hungry, fish, birds or land scavengers. Somehow... It put a weird feel in Larry's gut.  
  
    He first turned to the mostly-submerged sibling. "Thanks for savin' the arms, but you could have thrown 'em to me, not halfway up this bayou." He remembered kinder shit, also. "... You okay down there?"  
  
    Lemmy's eyes cast an angry seethe, before he climbed out and clambored past Larry, no hug or even handshake, to fetch the guns and get back on track. "Yeah, no thanks to us. We both got fucked there, no sense in talkin' more about it." It had struck him how he didn't pick up on danger, not a hair. He didn't expect more from Larry, but his own part in almost getting scrubbed... That hurt more than the knee he dinged on a submerged rock. He projected. "Oh and this is no bayou, we'd have to be at the ocean. But, y'know, who's grading us."  
  
    Larry felt the notions that brought on that take on it. He wanted to let it be. But that body floated low, on a river not all that big in volume. Sunken limbs and worn boulders caught the dead Toadie, made his drift a sputter that halted and then broke free again. At the least, this ex-man would give away position if he had cronies near. This, which once may have had a life beyond, with a wife, or family...  
  
    The younger koopaling set hand on Lemmy's shoulder. "We... Should bury him."  
  
    "What!? You gone outta your head, Frodo?" He stepped out from Larry, where the hand would fall away. "A heart's good to have, when you're not gonna have it peppered while you stop to be the bigger man! I mean what the fuck-"   
  
    "-Yeah and let him be a buoy that says 'They're through here, follow the bed and waste 'em'!? You want that instead, death from behind!?" Larry slung spit, getting riled like rarely ever. "No fucking thanks, Rambo!"  
  
    This made Lemmy stop a moment. There was quiet, with the breeze playing on stalks and limbs of greenery. But he walked away, picked up the guns that Larry didn't hold after a kill, and went on the same as they'd been. Far as he was concerned, the situation was memory.  
  
    Larry had a hundred reasons to fight this. A good portion of them lay in the same as what he'd named, to be found out from leaving clues the size of a corpse. This time, he didn't bring the words up and out his lips. He fell in behind Lemmy; just watched ever-closer the sky, and tree groves, and the water itself now. At least their living through this taught them something. To get them unawares would be all but impossible now.  
  
    He wished he wasn't aware of worries, that had nothing to do with self.  
  
    His voice came up again, but calm. "Dude I'm sorry, let's shelve that whole thing. If you wanna continue on, I get why."  
  
    Larry didn't bank on the answer. "I know you do. But... Hell, let's do it your way. I can see why for that, too." It sounded sort of semi-apologetic, as Larry had been ALL the way that, but... Something else as well. They were walking toward the flow of the stream; the unliving Toadie would float along, off and on, close to them for a while. So Lemmy stepped off the bank, into the drink, and fished out the corpse. Its pupils lay wide, dilated fully.  
  
    Larry shook his head at the neck a bit. "Nah, come on, the birds and shit'll get him, we can focus-"  
  
    Lemmy made all speech cease, when he pulled out the bowie knife held in his belt, and plunged it through the foe's heart. It made a handle he could lift by.  
  
    "B-bro, come on, we'll just be wasting daylight, and energy. Plus I didn't think, how we gonna bury that cuss exactly?"  
  
    The reply came laced with a chuckle for the obviousness of it. "Like this, man." Steady as a judge came Lemmy's tone, when he used one hand to hold, aim and fire the rifle straight in the Toadie's neck. Arteries severed and disintegrated, blood caked the wet fabric Lemmy stood in. The shot rang out for as many miles as the one by Larry's hand had.  
  
    Larry was instantly not okay. "Whoa, WHOA!! Man what'chu doin', that's... You're playin' with a dead guy!" Funny that Larry thought to call it that; even if the goal was different, he saw more on Lemmy's face than resigned duty.  
  
    "Relax, Larr'! It'll be over soon, plug your ears if you want." Expending all his advice, he blew another hole in the fucker's neck. This one robbed it of the half that still anchored head to body; the torso flew off yards ahead, and limbs ragdolled around helpless as they hit the bank, not two feet from Larry's cleats. Blood spattered him below the thighs. He threw a string of curse words and jumped in the river, washing off red from his camo. Lemmy had leapt into action, sprinted through the water and grabbed the knife handle back. In his other hand, by the hair tufts under a limp hood, was the head. Toadie's mouth was open and froze; even to Larry this gruesomeness crept on him, his spine in bumps and shivers.   
  
    Larry started to protest but felt his own jaw dropped and unaccomodating. Lemmy's first concern was portability; it's not as easy to bury a large hunk of shit, than to conceal shreads and pieces of the same. Straining, he pulled the bowie free from their kill, and sank it back in under the collarbone. Working around ribs, clavicles, he sliced through the sections. Cut out layers, dropped the eviscera in piles by the riverside. Trickles of scarlet met the edge currents. Tubes flopped out when his work separated some from each other. Larry's stomach turned, even after all his history with self-abuse and party drugs. The organs of that poor shitwad were revealed, as a lung escaped a cross-section Lemmy dissected like some flask slipping out a wet burlap sack.  
  
    Larry heaved. Lemmy frowned, and screamed inside, but made himself sing.  
  
    In minutes it was done. Bowser had their field bags packed to the brim, including bags for eliminating #2. One of these was repurposed, and into it the slimy flesh and gruel was thrown, and its handles tied fast and tight. Lemmy walked it over to the pit he'd hid in... The easiest place to sink this shit, as he set it atop the water, picked up a good-sized rock nearby, and set it with care over top. The weight put every scrap of skin, heart, duodenum et-cetera to a submerged final rest.  
  
    Once he stood again, Larry's back was to him. He walked over, and set fingers on the younger one's shoulder haunch under right arm. "It's done. Took no more time than it does to oil the axle on a new board." He patted Larry there, sideways. Had one more thing to say while his sibling still made no eye contact. "Let's march. You'll forget him by the time we need to."  
  
    "... S-sure... Yeah, we're off." He got it together, and when they strode off where they first had been going, it was foot-by-foot together. He couldn't let on that what he saw just now, had been harder to cap off and contain than his whole ride through withdrawal heretofore. He couldn't break now. Not after showing both of them he could seal the deal, even though it hurt. Not after... Seeing what Lemmy was prepared to go through... For their sakes, surely, and nothing more. To himself, Larry admitted he admired the act, what he could never do. And he didnt truly know the last time he felt this, that direction...  
  
    Lemmy coughed. It tasted of copper, a flyaway of the liquid sprayed from the last of that sunk body's carotid pressure. Queazy at the taste, but face as stone as the curves of the bed their river rolled on, conveyed down the wet prairies. He held out the rifle, Larry's, and it was taken and held.  
  
    Three more miles. 45 minutes of buzzing flies, gurgling of the brook, innocent caww's of crows and egrets. What was white noise to some may drive others mad; these were sounds that could mask sneak attempts, and one of Lemmy's premier thoughts were bleak daydreams that they'd be laid down like their carved bastard far behind them due to some overbearing bird, or a prominent rock making suds and loudly. He kept watch all the same.  
  
    So did Larry; and if anything could end the agoraphobia, and fright of replaying that Toadie's death and burial-'autopsy' again and again in his head, it was his discovery. He reached a hand across Lemmy as they walked together; both stopped on a pebble's width in the running shallows. Lemmy asked quick. "You hear somethin'?  
  
    "No. Try and squint at the horizon. Whadda you see." He had needed to put his eyelids low to glimpse it himself; but if it was a mirage, it was shared. Lemmy stepped back, reflexively, but no real need. All there was to see was a curve in the river; and a spread of trees, whose canopy defied height. Like there were no trunks on them, thrusting their foliage above an understory. The land just ahead sank down. For some reason, this didn't seem congruent with what little either prince had paid attention in geography tutoring.  
  
    And Larry wracked his brain; why would the river, flowing with them toward this depression, not keep straight and make falls that found their way in. Water seeks its lowest course. This brook avoided it in total, veering east. The closer they got, the more came out in the details. Trees were palms and firs, two noble plants of beauty in their own ways but almost never together. The landfall was a precipice, a drop that looked to be twenty, thirty feet. That river, going right, came as close as a foot from the cliff, and still never breached the side.  
  
    The trees were planted, and the valley was new. They crept up on it; by the time fifty yards lay inbetween they and the drop, they crawled like they had in high reeds. It was a moment where they'd knew next to none about what they even looked for, but clearly reached it.  
  
    Larry's voice came up first, as they inched up to the cliff. "... Man... He's built his own place alright... This shit's like a goddamn painting." He referred to the feel, most of all; no buildings to be seen, certainly no familiar people, denizens, troops, not a thing in that vein. The trees sparkled. Fruit grew heavy under palm branches, though none lay on the valley floor, as if it all ripened the day they came up on it. Inbetween the trunks - spaced perfectly, deliberately - squares made of stacked timber. Pyres, to lay something on, but so many they stretched on in the low land beyond any mortal's eyes. This was society, no one around to tend it, or even build it. Derelict but fresh, abandoned and doing sickly things to the minds of the mercenary pair. Larry swallowed hard.  
    "Lemmy... Tell me if you see a fuckin' soul. Or am I going off the deep end."  
  
    After an "Uhhh..." the sound vanished into a mere shake of his head. He was lost the same way.  
  
    They didn't want an answer from outside of them. Both went pale and shuffled back, making scuffs around their crotches in a meter-long retreat. Haze had spontaneously shown itself, dead-center of this valley head, in reference to them. It was tan, or golden, nowhere near the grey-white of smog or water vapour. Thicker at the ground than at its apex... A spire. Form had started coming to the cloud of colour. The longer they looked - sweat streaming off them, breaths hard and hearts racing - the more it broadened. This spectacle became solid. Fog begat a building. Its shape, and bricked construction, and ornate lines of symbols, inscripted on sides as with a cold love, made up a temple. Square pyramid, and trapezoidal segments showing busts of Magikoopas. Tall and wizened, some in poses to strike, these sculpted warlocks. Promotions of power, of war, where all had been thin air.  
  
    Larry's hand dug into Lemmy's side. The fingertips lodged between ribs. Tiny puffs came to be, under those strange trees. Between the firs that had lines of white, a powder-dust of what could be real snow, if it wasn't 64 Fahrenheit out. Puffs became black clouds. The hue stayed, as their forms spun in, wound tight and became as skin and clothes. And spectacles, and wands decked with gleaming jewels. Lemmy's teeth chattered; it was more than his frigid body's warming after a dip in waterlogged safety. He wished he had another freezing foxhole when his eyes parsed out the same as Larry's, looking on those wands. Waves came out, wafting like heat over pavement in June. They had never seen Toadies wield versions strong enough to bend sight. Yes, not heat, but this very thing; distortion of space itself. No words existed for the power contained in each of them. And every one of these were equal: simple citizens, in a kingdom newborn and ferocious. Larry's head seemed thick; he came wise to the pounding in it, and something inside told him the temple was to blame.  
  
    It - or something, or someone, in the unknown recesseses - sent out pulses that scrambled and fucked with him.  
  
    Lemmy said what he couldn't, though with strain like he wasn't immune. "I can't effin' believe... It's a trap. We're made."  
  
    Larry looked down, to the dirt. To the last foot or so of fine, regular Earth, before the end of it and a tumble down to a bastardized land they'd have to make. "Worse. I wish it was a trap, Lemmy, this shit ain't that..." He looked over, and feeling last hopes die, the rise of doom, spat over the side, landing it on lime green grassblades, another fake item. "It's a welcome. This is them sayin' 'Happy to see you'."  
  
    Lemmy's face went clammy. He turned neck until he stared to the river, and saw how smooth it flowed... Far more than a natural course. Even the water was altered, detoured, an entire fucking stream, and who could say how far around this pit, this caldera.   
  
    He dug his nose in the soil. Wanted to smell the silt, natural rot, one last time. "They didn't think we brought our own fireworks. If we're bound for hell, they'll be chained to us. Move quick 'n' aim deliberate."  
  
    Larry and rationale had no time at all. In a flash, his brother pushed up, checked the aim and where he'd land, and leapt straight down to the Valley of Elders.  
  
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    His claws clicked, walking through wheat in rows that were manicured well. Bowser had respect for the skill of it, only since the ones who planted and farmed lived under him, invariably. The chaff stuck in his scaletips made a slight annoyance also.  
  
    Odd, how this piercing quiet came across as deafening. Loud to a lone man, unaccustomed to long walks with not so much as a pair of friendly eyes seeing to him. What he said he always meant: he could trust no one more than himself to track Mario, so he could trust no one.  
  
    How far could that Italian go, wounded, demoralized? He'd stirred carnage, for certain, and there'd be no more. The only chance opposite, if the pipefitter somehow found a way to re-energize... The king shook it out of his head, this was not the best time to borrow trouble. At the same time... Gods only knew how he'd come upon that type of power. As a warm wind blew, Bowser found himself shivering.  
  
    He clicked fingertips more; funny, he'd used to love this as a young prince. Many a servant could be irritated, drove to limits of patience by his playing castanets on himself. It started in childish fun, and there it extinguished, long before his anointing or the set of his crown. He wouldn't buy it if someone told him old habits die hard, and can shift natures. What he did now was in nervous strides. Broad legs, surefooted, yet fear-encumbered. There were acres and acres, of... Acres and acres. He gained a light appreciation for where their food came from.  
  
    Not many thoughts were repelled, out in these wilds. He found himself humming. They were low notes, his anthem, what the troops worshipped by. It all flooded back the second his chords strummed the first notes; in this way, they were the score for pondering. Why, ever, did Mario grace this place. Sure the king had involved himself in... Annexing, like any good politician who needs to grow his kingdom, wise and prosperous as he's steered them. Danger in human form wasn't always the second strike; but retaliation didn't cease being tacky. In his educated mind, the koopa monarch weighed it. He came to a decision...  
  
    ... This fucking sucked.  
  
    Absolutely he stopped dreading whatever lay over gnolls and plowed crops. It's not like he followed a trail, there was none, no Mario-shaped burn scars if the fool had 'recharged', and simultaneously, no stomped-down stalks where if a regular guy, there'd be a man's unassuming footprints. And there'd be blood in either case, since the gourd of a human had injuries, thanks to Bowser's mettle. The king smirked, mismatched as always. He'd knew the luck of the plumber was finite.  
  
    It would have also been before now, was the problem.  
  
    His walk came to a halt. Quickly, his right foot twitched, but his chin was slow in dipping to show him the cause. A corn snake touched him by incredible chance; the tongue flicked his pygmy toe. It crawled, and decided to make way across his instep. He could have reached and picked it up; stretched it in twain 'til it snapped, killing it; even took fingers softly to it, petting its neck and the length down from there. None of these happened. Instead his sigh sent it on its way, darting into wheat after half the journey across his foot. The breath had been that strong.  
  
    He spoke out loud, to himself; there was seething and regret inside, knowing well who he missed talking to. "You fled from me. If I forgive, and let you go, it extinguishes the sole good you planted." He stared to the left, and ahead; these were directions with the broadest view, where stalks and stems overran for miles upon miles. Then, to the dirt again; thinking of what lay beyond it, the depths, and old wives' tales of infernos even his kind would suffer in. Folklore to him, but to many, hell was tangible. A threat imminent for some, fated doom.   
  
    He decided it was not his to find it... And likely not for the plumber. Many tricks were in the memory banks, Bowser ran through every one of them out here. The years and decades were filled to bursting with crafty shit; if he lived, Mario could dash through here and hide all evidence he did. He could find a leaf, and take to the skies... Motherfuck, of course he could, so what did this accomplish?  
  
    He could see that bastard evading, getting off scot-free by any means under the sun. No reason to think he didn't, so there lived no suspicion in the king's mind of lies from his messengers. In an odd way it appeased him; Mario was one thing that could stay his fears of revolt or mutiny, that greased pig of a public enemy would always tip the scales of alarm. Royal hands went up, and out; he stretched unceremoniously. This 'hike' had not been for nothing; solitude sharpened him, and the quiet focused his next moves for him. His time would be better-spent back where he administered. Huge feet swung him around, and prints sank in behind him though the ground was dry, even cracked. It hadn't hit him how brown this wheat appeared, he'd have to know more of how it's meant to look. Though he owned it this was not his world. His people pulled on him, and if more in touch with sensitivity, he might understand how the pull was by one organ. His was a heavy heart, until visions of the castle, life's activity, lifted it.  
  
    In a few moments he was full-speed back toward civilization. Mario left, he was sure, so he'd find his subjects fine but for the other threat. Thick bushes of red brow went angry... Now that he thought more on it, the problem-number-one wore no overalls. He lost it for an instant; raked a fist through the field and then punched air. Sparrows flew high and far while he roared in blood-curdling outburst. Never in his life did he imagine two killers, vying for the chance to sweep his land and claim lives. If Kamek didn't wipe them from existence, Mario had time and license to, and if not him, the legion of mindless turncoats his wizard foe used. Briefly, the king felt schizo, almost glad for a particular thought. If he could turn one against the other... But it just brought him down further, after slight logic over it. Why would Kamek fight someone with no lands to steal, that cur. And what gave a plumber motive to fight a mage, when no longer tethered to real power?  
  
    Justifying was easy. Ego and its feeding were even simpler. To forget, though, what that man had meant to him... He closed his eyes, still marching on. The fucker would expire, and he'd see the ruin, bury the limbs and clothes tatters himself. And by then, Kamek should be done and gone too.  
  
    These things he so often filtered out left again after so many steps, another mile and a fraction. He would take care of them, his people. Return to glory, run the castle with martial law, precision handling of every part. Should he lose this, or falter and let either enemy slip in advantaged, then all the faith he had in two sons would be frivolous. Indulgence. But they weren't, so long as he could help it. Their fatigues had left him proud. Their guns were assurance. In his head he recalled every word, sending them off. And their faces, so loyal, becoming as his. Close to adulthood and stronger every day. He had time to cry. Down his face, while nostalgia stacked on itself. Back to months past. Clatter while Lemmy tried his new toy, the grind of four wheels and two axles. The first time Larry left clues in an ashtray, and the smile Bowser wanted to have behind his fatherly scowl, and the reprimand. They were his, indelibly. And still no one could separate the rest; whispers of the other, who gave him the greatest gifts his life would know, all seven. Hers was the ordained love. When her grace filled him - soothed while he weakened and had him grin through tears - it felt as if he'd never known the forbidden one.  
  
    Other things were vivid, entirely. One of these became a rustling ahead; he ceased all motion, froze on the spot. Someone ran, and the figure at a distance had height. Not Mario, then, but red was near the top of this silhouette, while colour info changed and improved. He might need spectacles; at his age, it took until she was in throwing distance, when he relaxed. His was to run as well, toward the red that was lipstick, and a face he'd welcome any time. Wendy hadn't stayed behind. He couldn't ground her for caring, as she came up by sprint through hill and glen, and reached him with a leaping hug. He had the strength of ten ox, and held back every bit as she exclaimed "Daddy!" while she threw arms around him. No matter how old she got, always the quickest way to his better self.  
  
    "I'm so glad..." She couldn't end the sentence, a lump in her throat on the ascent. He knew it was about his safety; though he was startled in a mild way, finding she had left to locate him. It raised questions all over, how she knew, why it was her that departed. He excused them from his mind and his large green arms closed over her. She felt a bond no one could replace; knowing this, she cried a bit deeper. His warmth and the sound of his lungs softened her sobs; when they parted touch she had composure back, and a load of her own questions. They didn't wait. "Why would you take off like that!?  You didn't think to let us know before you go blaze a trail? NO escort? What, are you a third killer to help the two you christened, is this that!?"  
  
    Her belligerence went over less than well. In a flash his affection went to rage, eyes drastic, smallened. "I am overseer, and what I do is not for me." He indulged one portion of her cockiness: bending his neck, he used a giant chin to 'point' toward where he'd been trending to. "Our visit went badly. When I thought I had him under lock and key, guess what happened."  
  
    She didn't have to; being daddy's girl, their wavelengths were never far apart. Brash airs cooled and her shoulders sank. "How'd the fat sack of crap do it this time?"  
  
    He became chillier. "That's for me to research. And regret." Where he focused now was where she had originated... It was a far-off turret that broke over the horizon, all that could be made out of their home. "I won't lie and say I can't have impulse. When I do, is it really wise to involve you?"  
  
    ... She thought for a moment. When she next spoke, it wasn't what Bowser thought he'd hear. "Some of us don't want wisdom if it replaces info." She leaned in, her neck's cords shallow and smooth. "Sounds like a phrase you can stomach."  
  
    He reared back, more by the chest than anything else. If he was to be mad now, he'd first have to cease being impressed. And, honestly, convicted.   
  
    She stepped forward, took his hand in hers. "I'm okay with you doing whatever you need. I've always been." She gave him a palm squeeze; it was strong, and he got the strangest notion when its power met him. Somehow, this rang familiar. She elaborated. "But you're in nothing alone, if I count. Tell me I don't."  
  
    She squeezed again. There was light in her left eye; it had shape, and what did it remind him of?... Nothing tangible, but a fierceness, something explosive. In the blink of his eye, it came back. Like she still wore the polka-dot bow, the clunk heels, and towed a wagon full of sparklers... And shells, and safety grenades.  
  
    He was full with attuned glee. Teeth the size of her wrist showed in grin. "I can tell you to be careful yourself. Because there's certain things I maybe can't discourage anymore."  
  
    Seeing that he understood, she almost wanted to bawl again, appreciative. And she fully meant to make him proud. "If I promise to only blow craters where the walking gourd was in one piece, you'll believe me."  
  
    What she thought she saw was invitation, a handwave to fully utilize the stockpile. She would put an arsenal over top of his daft little pastaphile head. After him, should Larry and Lemmy be struggling hemmed in their place, she'd mop around and be the ally-angel-of-death they deserved.  
  
    Bowser's mind had meant it thereby, for sure. But he had provisions. "Mario will never be our past, I can increasingly tell. So when you're permitted a week from now, I'll see to it you go with honour. The kar will be repaired by then."  
  
    All at once she gazed in his eyes, with a shocked pair of hers. He nodded, gentle as a bee's landing on flower stalks. In his love he hid the disappointment. "Some things don't change, that is a fact. You'll always be my Little War Girl. And I'll likewise ever-know when you shit the bathwater and I have to doctor the mess you leave." Consternated, clear as could be in the low tone.  
    She wanted to speak, but would have stammered. After all, what was there to say? Aside from the natural: "I'm sorry, daddy. I just-"  
  
    "I know what you 'just'. It's alright, too late to be helped now. Your father can have that contraption back up and purring like a kitten, it would be the twelvth time. I counted." His gaze imprinted cheeky judgement. She was to know his anger, though it boiled down to so little here, a rarity. His hand came up; her locks were long and down her cheek. He ran a claw through their curtain. "Perhaps one day, when I tell you I see all one way or another, you'll retain that info."  
  
    He was unabashedly cute. This side was familiar to her, in a way most infuriating. She flipped around and hid the red in her visage. "I'm... Happy you're not hurt. If you have to go on, I won't object. I'll get back and put myself in my room."  
  
    The king said nothing for a short spell; five seconds saw them locked in a somber still. She put one foot forward, to the castle whence she came. Then she heard him. "Not that you need it, but there's no sense in travelling alone."  
  
    His digits cupped her shoulder, by the neck. There was slight platonic rub. Her eyes closed; in her mind, at that moment she was six, having his comfort when she fell and sprained her wrist. Or when she burned her forearm setting off mortars to blow apart a derelict house. This love too had found her at ten or so, when her Huffy bike whizzed by three middle school boys, and having them hoot and express cool props for a cool girl she then looked back to flash them a smile, forgetting that bikes still go when you glance away, and trees at the roadside don't just move. One constant persisted, and his feet held him down to the world she couldn't bear in his removal. She could not be sad to be grounded. Pensive, but that was incidental. Bowser worried over Mario, as did she, but a week was by far beyond another target; the one set for and concerning two siblings, erasing the traitor. She knew this timespan was by daddy's design. She sympathized with why. Now - and only now - had she ever really wished to blip out of life, stop existing for long enough that her limits she could not lament.  
  
    Her legs carried through wheat and weeds. His thundering steps were her guard. She didn't need to talk over why she respected his choice; but she wished not to have silence, not right now. "Everyone was mostly fine when you went. I don't know if you passed down word to the palace, or if they only know you well."  
  
    "I would hope for the second." A moth flew by; its powdered wings were a sparkle in the day's light. He saw it, and thought was provoked. If it had another month of life, so too did his kingdom. He attached these threads, making it as if the bug was responsibility. Innocence, preserved by the best ruler they'd see... One day immortalized as Bowser the Great. He would make the statue happen, as he'd make his people owners of their destiny. His look endured on its flutter as he added to his own words. "But since I did the first, that's impossible to know."  
  
    She was by now outside of pettiness, so it didn't process as neglect. Preservation was the idea. While hers, at that point on the peak of a grassed mound, was optimism. "They can have control that's remarkable. I see it whenever you explain the state of things. They hinge on you."  
  
    He didn't buy her flattery; but also suspected there was more to it, so no impatience grew in him. Reply was terse, though, disconnected. "If I had time and even words to explain all inside of my day, you're right, I would never want for respect. The truth of how that's just not practical controls me."  
  
    She really didn't recall when he'd talked of something 'checking' him, or superceding. It was a quick choice to shift the topic. She put sunshine in her voice. "Who do you think will bag the most bodies? Lemmy was kinda different, he was gung-ho when we saw him and made the handoff. Call me goofy but I think they'll both have wicked fun, we're not all that different."  
  
    Bowser's pitch changed also, but to quiz-mode. "Handoff?"  
  
    ... Alright, so not everything had been made public to him. She geared up for a long talk about Iggy's baby.  
  
    He was dispassionate hearing it. Respectful of Iggy's plan, however, what he'd chose to make and how. The king threw out blurbs of interest, asked about the firing range, the gory affect. Within himself there were other thoughts. The people he missed, and what he'd do different to aid them. How he might have failed before but there was still time. And the greasy plumber, maybe clear-to-Timbuktu by now, and if so good riddance for another indeterminate stint. Strange how things added up; if he'd had one more glance, back at the kingdom... Opportunities...  
  
    Wendy had turmoils no less. Being banished so to speak in confines of the castle, she'd be not unlike a certain Elizabeth, shrouded at Windsor while bombs went off in Earth's London, so many years past. Unable to hide from knowledge of war, unempowered to fight. She loved her father, knew that he'd been merciful in his 'sentence'... She could still sleep, or find more ways to help anyway... In fact, with the right circumstance, she could slip out, as he had done on her for the chase of an Italian. House-arrest would preclude her doing anything direct for the cause. For the people. There was no ill will to the man she walked with, though she now plotted to defy him, and by doing so, save them. It might be the only way; she was certain.  
  
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    The nose of an Albatoss burned. He had fatigue from such long hours, it didn't occur to him he'd been around iodine for so long. Only his arms and feet could rest now, stooped over the counter in a withering lean. He jotted figures on the sheet; this way they might at least be remembered, though it wasn't even the right form. He'd rewrite this later on the proper type and pass it down the line, for administration, the HR mooks. Once he coughed; it was dry throat, he was rather parched from nine straight hours with no intake.   
  
    Notes therein may not have been the condition of Tom, but that wasn't good tidings. It was just what it was. The breaking of this news would be done in some fashion, but goddamn, that would be the worst side of this whole catastrophe. He'd gladly give a thousand keynote addresses at seminars, do his entire doctorate again with the same student debts, if it meant not having to go there.   
  
    His room was compact, a simple nook that was finished out to an office; he'd not always been perfect, and when he couldn't save the life of a soldier the highest one favoured, and had played poker with... This was also what it amounted to, and no more. He scribbled on; the fingers weaved, put an accidental, almost beautiful curve to his chicken-scratch. The mark skewed right off the page once, startled when the door was knocked on. Only one person had the right to knock and then enter without awaiting welcome... This man happened to be the one who walked tiredly in. Cobrat had his stethoscope and his streaked smudges; there had been internal action, working to save and suture. He was sternly sure to close the door behind him.  
  
    The bird spoke at his peer, strong of mind even if the fuel faltered. "There's coffee cake downstairs at reception. I signed Kendra's birthday card for you." He tapped on countertop while his other hand got back to writing. That was all the small talk he'd be covering; now it got real. "Twenty-seven years in the field, and the only thing that lets me sleep is still the stabilizing algorythm. That machine owns me at the end of the day." He finished out a line on the paper, and dropped the pen. A wince an instant in length was the only reaction; this man wouldn't crack for that slight a button-push.  
  
    Cobrat then brought him lower tones - and thoughts - than he expected. "Some of us would have liked to hear that sound. Earlier, at least. My guy's in a bad way." It was a casual way to speak of Tom. He'd developed a kinship, in a surgeon's way, with the slab of flesh on his operating table. Living, not all that much more. "He lost pressure. We got it to elevate, he's out of danger for now barring some hemmhorage or other turn for the worse. But his brain was atrophied. If he wakes up..." They both had shivers in the neck at this, where a mammal would have hairs stand on end, "All signs point to him having cognitive issues. The rest of his life, most likely. There's markers of a stutter, with our new imaging systems and what they can tell. Senescent malaise, or he could have emotional problems." The Cobrat saw in his contemporary's gaze, the build of fog and a stress-given breakdown that wanted to come, but was held at bay. He attached a thought to the end of this update of his; it was rarely symathetic. "It's a small price to pay for surviving, I'm going to say. And in these times all the same." He watched the Albatoss grow untense, and return to jotting the info from before. He didn't mean to pry, but he wasn't yet ready to be spared a talk with a friend. "You poring over charts and numbers?"  
  
    He chuckled; only the snake would know that was a better time for him and why. "No. It's for Frank and the rest of the board. The receptionist whispered something to me. I have camera footage to check, from an earlier surgery. It was on Prince Ludwig. I'm dying to tell you  more but that will have to wait until after they hear word." He was honest; he would say all there was to know about a possible security breach - affecting his friend here along with all else - when the policy was seen to by first telling those above. "If I started to run out the window, would you stop me?" He suddenly had the Cobrat in giggles. He chuckled himself above the paper he finished out the notes on. A drawer was yanked open, and it went inside.  
  
    Snake doc had a piece on his mind, though. "I don't guess there's anyone besides the royals to give dialogue. That may help me, sorry to be blunt. I had them check everywhere in his records, high and low. Tom doesn't have listed family or dependents. That doesn't mean he doesn't have any, but, that's redundant to say here I know." His bird ally reacted, but with a scrape of his foot; this always meant he was annoyed, so the reptile didn't push his unintended self-pep-talk any further. They were clearly in different boats.  
  
    The Albatoss spoke back in a way that had softness. He carried his inner peace, since he'd long-decided how to drop this vocal bomb to the beloved. "I'll have Louis break word to them while he's relaying status. I've never known a nurse to have a better handle on people all the time he's been under us. He could tell a mother her boy was crushed in a sheet metal press, and have her joking by the time she walked out." It was one of the harsher ways to make his point, but a real summation of what life was like in this organization. The snake merely nodded. The bird tacked on an observing of his. "I'm not worried so much about the heir's wife, Esmerelda. She's peacible, and then there's that 60-karat ring on her hand she can cry into."  
  
    "Amen." The Cobrat remembered last month, and how hard it was for his spouse of nine years to accept his gift of a cruise. This wasn't resentful; he'd found charm in her humility. All the same, he recognized the unspoken; it would be so much more a chore to let the blood-family in on this. Never any reason to think it went well by nature. He pulled on his starched collar, letting steam escape.  
  
    The beaked one threw out a group of words, unfocused by inner demons. "Let her be there for him, and he can anchor the rest after. Nothing is done until it is." He looked up to snakeman once more, but leaned a tad; so overworked he could pass as half-drunk though sober as hell. "I want one thing, and that's for Mario to stay well and far away. These drop-ins are getting comical. One a year, and everything has to stop when he shows up. It's a monkey house." He referred to the tumult around them when an Italian threatened. Inherently and always.  
  
    Cobrat had a question on his tongue for just this. "Do you think he'll fuck the process of getting the magician dealt with, or is it an issue of going around besotted by the risk?"  
  
    "Now that is a golden query. I'll hope for all I'm worth it's the second." Albatoss wore the look of someone pessimistic who learned to be. " 'What does it do for me', I find myself asking. You have to. Our jobs change every seminar, and it doesn't stop when they pounce on doubts around us."  
  
    "Yes. I can't debate that." The reptile shared irritance, and it defused from the comfort of another salary man, his equal in counsel.  
  
    ... Then another question reared its formless head. He sounded more unfettered. "If he gets a headstone, as they tried for years to do and swear they will... What becomes of us and our jobs?"  
    He meant it as a quip and the bird knew this. They laughed, as their tired brains would do. But Albatoss had something of substance for this. "Nothing, as a matter of course. People still get sick. Dads still try to start their own barbecue grills. Moms still try and insert things that don't go there when the dads are away, and get stuck." He started chuckling while he said it.  
  
    If there wasn't a similar response, it's because the facts were too close to the surface of it. The soldiers already rolled in, literally, gurneys heavy with them, the quiet and unconscious to the bleeding and screaming. The majority were on the worse end of this sliding scale; wails of pain and pleading were profuse. The lower nurses and non-senior MD's were turning blue with exertion and screamed orders in the sterile halls. Mario might make it harder, the amount of legwork, but they'd always been used to this. And if he should expire - or leave for all of time, in some twist of fate - they would have the job security everyone wants.  
  
    The Albatoss sighed, and stood. It was time to check again on the dimmed light he tended, Tom and his delicate state. He passed Dr. Cobrat; the snake side-checked him with neck, firm and supportive, and they left together. Time to defy the odds some more.  
  
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    Many floors below, the uniformed knew just as deeply how death doesn't quit. An Italian regretted the present and most every move that led to it; on the operating gurney, writhing like a worm whose length was dissected alive, Mario shed thick tears. It was too difficult to look; seeing just once the fragile skeleton of the late, undeserving KP, no more now than a rug on the rock and grout. Dust had shook off the bones when that bastard helper dropped them like the husk he was; this place had such miasma that a man dead so recent should already decay to his utterest. The cold, stiff canvas had Mario's head, cradling the unconsoled... Where did the rusted tables end, and these moveable gore trains begin? He would be just scraps for both before long, he knew in the depths of him. This place told a story like the shades of a poison-dart frog: one who entered here was not meant to leave, it just wasn't designed this way. It may take a brief spell to concoct some escape attempt... Or it may take a lifetime, it was all the same here, since two more aides of the glowering Pidgit - tall and brusque Sledge handlers, heartless in their eyes and the sweep of their hands - sidled up to the plumber. Each was like a giant gourd, unshapen muscle but four trunks of reach to inflict hate, ashen limbs with ability to bust up lives. Their grimed paws hit his ankles and shoulders, one in each Sledger's hand. He was going nowhere. And the doc knew another piece with which to fill his ears, ringing as they were.  
  
    "I have specialties, you'll know. Disgraced physicians bring their heart to their work, won't you agree?... Oh, forgiveness please. I haven't even shown the start of proving that for you." He made a gesture to the grunt on Mario's left, it was indiscernible.  
  
    The result was that Sledge bro bearing down with his arm, true vicegrip. Tighter by a mile in a second. Mario's forearm went to agony, pressure crunching the tendons, then the calcified middle. There was a 'SNAP', and lo did Mario's foot go through the fabric, kicking downward since up was impossible while these thugs held him. Stomach-turning screams were in the next room, and now Mario's own; his right arm was useless, in tatters on the outside, splintered into ribbons inside. He could feel the blood fill space between fractures, almost passing from consciousness. Curse the gods that allowed him to hold on as Pidgit spoke again.  
  
    "Teach a man to treat others like dough, you get a menace to society. Set him up with the right job, a love of the work, and you have a paid professional." At the brute's ankles, the cold hand of his boss stroked his leg hairs, even toyed with some. "Theeere, Chauncey. You've earned your Twinkie, they're in my opal box downstairs." Mario's mind warped when seizing with pain and working through those words... There was a downstairs from here!? No time to find out how nor why. "Careful, if I find two or more missing, I shall make new games with your buddies. And your beautiful spleen."  
  
    The big galute heard and his eyes went timid, cooled on the results of fudging it at any rate. He lumbered away, and out the door for some stairwell that could only contain a hell below and worse. Had he been seeing things? Did the aide cross his kneecaps, like he thought the spleen was a... Lower decoration? So this beaked coordinator lied to his bizarro-staff about what he'd do to them. Somehow that made the most sense, in disquieting directions.   
  
    To think of the lumbering killer at rest, sitting on his ass 'n' chomping a snack cake, was a shade of delight, were it ANYplace but here and now... It might ward off the dread for that precious second, a dip of water cooling his tongue.  
  
    The good doctor saw this placate him, so the Pidgit's sigh and clasping of hands undid that favour. "Management is not for the shy. But I ask you to ignore the time wasted, Mario. I'll be kinder in that regard. Responsible."  
  
    Mario had to loathe when the cur spoke with finality. It was rightful spite... The doc nodded to the second Sledge thrower, who knew Step-2. Huge meaty hands took Mario's chest in fistfuls, far beyond the shredded clothes and black carpet. The hold alone was invasive; Mario squealed his damndest as flesh charged into the valleys of his ribcage, shoved in and terrifically horrible. It hadn't even got going.  
  
    One harsh grab later, the clinch split a rib on the right of the cage. Broke like a twig. Screams went high and long from the terrorized human. The grope went on; there were joy-infused snickers in what had to be that beast bro's tones, while another rib snapped. Then another. Mario saw bright flashes in his eyelids, wincing so hard he hurt them while they crazed behind his powerlessness; could not hold them open while the fucker did that Pidgit's bidding. 'Chauncey' slammed his other hand on Mario's mug; the palm alone hid the face in totality, and a thumb pushed into the smooth ruddy cheek. Massive fingers hit the other cheek, and Mario knew even before it happened, this was a game of follow-the-leader. Two seconds more and the Bro took that facial structure to slaughter; Mario's yell gargled as his skull fractured just above the poor jawbone. The brainpan was solid, intact; everything in Mario begged for it not to be, but no such end was headed for him. The other hairy arm was laid out; twitching but unharmed, besides the cuts and blooded sinew from the battle-royale. Mario's last thoughtful effort, the one thing he could try and see to, was to psyche them out. If he didn't move it, they'd think it was already broken.  
  
    It's not like the physician would up and forget what he'd had 'work done on', sadly. Mario heard a simple "The other one, before he thinks he's wise" and before it could occur to him what that hinted at, down on his better hand the Sledger descended. The fingers in that glove were a pity, thought the simple giant; he laughed outright at the tininess. They were took one-by-one, almost lovingly pulled until dislodged from joints. Five different shrieks from Mario, and at the end of this, finally an appeal to good, if any still lived in reach of this hovel. From his battered lungs he propelled it, the beseeching. "GOD IN-A HEAVEN A-HELP ME!! WH-WHAT HAVE I DONE, WHO IS THIS SICKO'S A-FALLEN ONE!? TAKE BACK MY DEEDS, L-LET HIM BACK TO THE WORLD, BUT-A SPARE M-BLRRAAAHHHH!!"  
  
    His howl was poignant; he was a man whose bottom lip tore off like the Sledge bro had plucked cotton candy. No matter his redemption it sat badly with the Pidgit. A few more motions to his muscular help, and Mario had been took by the lower jaw, manhandled again. Bone and stripped vessels dangled behind, now vented by drafty access and a pain unimaginable. Mario's hysteria barely let a syllable of the doc's be heard, but every one of them were trying. "You have SOME kind of nerve, filling the air with that! Deeds are done and he was buried, with honour. But I'll tell you three fingernails lay next to where he fell, his own. We poured dirt on them with him, sewn into his farewell tunic. It stood for love and loss, two things you DO NOT KNOW, dingbat! But your luck is ended, I should remind myself. You will not get his honour, but experience the price."  
  
    If the doctor hadn't calmed himself, showing a restraint that only struck further fear, it might be easier to take the next sight. Into his red-spackled coat the Pidgit dived a hand and pulled a metal filer. Chortles from the Sledge bro made it ever-worse. This beast enjoyed the instrument, and fidgets told he was anxious to see it in action. Mario knew prior to it coming near him what it led to. "P-please, it won't bring him back, I know you-a know this, just make it -a stop and I-"  
  
    "That's a valiant attempt, sir, but appeals by way of praising my perception aren't magic."   
  
    Mario's hope fell lower, a face trembling and ripped asunder, weeping blood in his tears. The helper took his arm by the wrist. The metal file, etched with a monogram no one could decipher in a state like Mario's, was pushed into human index finger, up under nailbed. No noise can match the peel of a full fingernail off the plane it anchors to. Mario would hiss in pain if he wasn't screaming, or if anything sounded right with half his lower face missing.  
  
    "You gave us lamentation. It was fine gift, lasted many years. We had no child, he nor I, our line ends with me." Mario half-writhed, held down like a dog being defiled sans anaesthesia. The second fingernail was dug under - no care nor steadiness - pried up off its soft white flesh. Crude motions and a grudge meant no targeting; blood instantly poured from a place never meant to hit air. "Don't misinterpret me, pipe king. I'm not a family man. Your sin was stealing his choice, it was made so recent to your taking him. I would have been a passable uncle. I'm a better brother." He clearly felt none of the irony, while his crony took another of Mario's nails; three spots on his hand that stung when the slightest breeze whisked. When he even thought of it. When the tall fucker chided him and gusts from the laugh swept down. Chauncey even tried a good, cowering hoot himself; he mocked their prisoner and the impression was long. Plenty to roast when their opponent lay in pieces held by skin, some ends. There were laughs from the doc, and a clapping of hands one time in delight. "Positively droll! Now comes a beloved portion of mine... I leave it to you, Chauncey, what do we take of his next?" There was a weight shift on the fabric, no relation to the red dribbling down, staining every end of this soaked plain tapestry that held the plumber. Dr. Pidgit had jumped to stand right by Mario. He was steady on this lumpy ground; the monster had practice looking over victims in their time expiring.  
  
    There came grunts in series from the Sledge bro, a grotesque voice; could 'Chauncey' even comprehend English? Seemed that Mario would never find out... The foe slipped an arm under his back, picked up his whole mangled human form, looked the hero over. Mario's gaze could not open; too much brought him to helplessness, excruciated, blood-loss and organ trauma, overfought, weak and thirsty, on the door of death. He didn't know where the evil giant looked and smiled his most cruel. But there had been a place.  
  
    From the doc's tutelage, that overgrown turd knew what hurt the most to do, and what type of grief stayed. Mario was hoisted by a lock of his hair; the other arm slid out from him at fever-pitch, left him pulled and dangling by scalp locks. This was to herald what followed: Sledge bro stood wider, then swung the poor jerk down between his legs, then up to each shoulder. Made him nunchucks. Shrieks of miserable begs were at every move, diverse in pitch and loudness. The mindless jerk hollered, his human's suffering renewed him. Then when Mario's limp body headed upward, he let go. Lobbed him into the ceiling, where plaster and rotted gruel fell in cakes with him and his new-flattened nose. Wheezing spit left Mario; he was caught by one hand held high and flat, then curled around his throat. His own weight came down on his windpipe.  
  
    Pure might from the Sledge bro slammed him on its chest, like a brick fence while the owner felt nothing; he was a teddy bear for one moment, even 'cuddled' in fake performance with twisted comfort. Blood and pus stamped the belly of the beast, plumbershaped. Then Chauncey's brutality plucked him right off and shoved him to the real wall, teeth knocked out on treated stone and corpse dust. Another cog in the pain machine and yet with reason in it... Put simply, there were too many clothes tatters still hanging about him, strewn like a cat-clawed dress. This would not do, they'd have to come off. Mario strained to breathe from the slams, the fall on his trachea, then from tight scraps cutting into him while the Sledger pulled each piece of denim off, from the back, no matter how it lay in whole patches on the other side. Blood vessels broke in his core, around rib splinters, cracked collar. Every piece ripped off him was as a talon flays; they stripped layers from his chest, his gut. Almost zilch inside was whole by when he was naked; held up from one hand inside Chauncey's, the one with fingers turned to mash. No strength in the legs to hold him up; everything was dim, grainy in edges of his stare straight through eyelids at unwashed walls and gorecrust. The keepers sounded faint to him but none of this dulled.   
  
    He prayed only for an end; in speechless torment, they had broke him. Seeing Peach one more time wasn't worth living through a single break more.  
  
    He was lifted back cold as ever to the gurney, face-down. It made the lack of jaw unbearable. And the Pidgit stayed for the gratuitous beatdown. Clearly plotted so that when their mark was laid this way, he could be that close to counsel. His ear - one thing of Mario's that defied pain or puncture to this moment - took in what a cheery foe dispensed. This had been therapy. "I must say you're doing swell, exemplary condition! You smashed expectations which began lofty. I can admit I'm shocked that your screams don't exceed the norm for contusions. You have SO much more left in you."   
  
    There was a \*tink\*, an unusual echo in the cubic room. Mario breathed wails, bereft of speech; he knew he was about to learn what it was. On the small of his undressed back - skin in tassels - a thin feel of cold touched down. Had Mario eyes in the back of his head, he'd have seen the scalpel, and how unwashed and fetid. Chauncey's nose wrinkled; the thing positively stank. Down onto hideless flesh it pushed, then dug. The plumber's back arched; syllables of anguish left his half-mouth. It peeled him back, veins tearing, muscle fiber in worse shape than the pile of bloodied clothes under his ordeal. Being skinned had been easier. He coughed into the gurney cloth, it tasted of iron and the last breaths of others. Chauncey's laugh rustled in his throat, a knife down a jagged washboard in tone. What he did looked the same fashion. The doctor leaned in over Mario, with wee nods and respect for the haphazardness. He put weight on the closer side of a human back; this drove it down, split the incision wider. Mario screamed himself hoarse; bloodspray polkadotted the boss's beak and brow. It dripped back into the fold, uselessly, with his snickers.  
  
    "Tell me a story, warrior! I wish to hear the tale, the day you stood up to the big man upstairs, but forgot the ones who bow to him and our diverse means. Which foot touched the floor first this morning? What was your breakfast?" He said over the pious noises issuing from underneath; Mario's prayer, his stab at giving last rites. No priest would they provide for this, most obviously. The blade worked down to a standstill; the Sledge bro got it stuck, going too close to the spine. He jigged it to loosen it back up; every move of retry was another squealed grovel from Mario. The doctor delighted more, and then playfully slapped at himself. "Silly me, once more! I have daft moments, I implore you to bear with me. It slipped my mind that we'll soon find out that last one!"  
  
    The Italian had flaps of skin like horrid 'wings' bent to either side, and internals that looked more and more like chowder, a half-set mould of pieces of him. The arms of Chauncey swept below again, on his belly; He screamed before he was turned over, all anticipation. He wasn't laid gentle, as with the last move; now he was dropped, on the exposure of sinew. Jostled to where his organs touched the stark, filthy cloth. To think that pain could possibly have this... honest-to-God rigor; severity would never be a strong enough word. He could never bear to open his eyes, look up to the tank of evil might who played surgeon to him. Chauncey AND his cheerleading master were aware. So the Pidgit, leaning back on the patient with a calloused elbow, reached up to those peepers. Grabbed the lids, and deftly opened both. Mario begged in his mother tongue, forgotten for years, as it flooded back to him... But the Pidgit spoke through, uncaring if he was heard. "such needless hate. It won't change a single part of this, you can take that to your grave. I've had it with playing nice. Chauncey?" He spoke up now, because this involved his cohort. "Play time is over. You can join your cousin for a sweet treat. I have to go in myself... I'll find out what he ate before he croaks here. It will be fed back to him, in all the gastric juice, so he may choke on his consumption." And though still addressing the tall crony, his beady glare put onto Mario's irises, frozen by a fear sublime. "Call it cornball, if you so desire. But you're religious, or at least you were in praying? And faiths are all about symbolism. The lives you consumed, dear Mario... Did you ask your gods to bless them?"  
  
    He couldn't answer... But the slam of a door had Chauncey jump out of his skin. The doc dropped his grip, so the eyelids closed once more. Mario hadn't the foggiest, in throes of bleeding woe, who arrived for him. He lost further hold on the here and now, and as yells and orders filled the room, and booming crashes, he at long last was out. No one knew besides that new guest, the last thing Mario heard was the 'doctor' impaled. Sword's steel flashed light past and over his march into coma.  
  
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    It was a hike, Bowser and his only daughter's trek back to civilization. There'd been time for small talk, the few moments they pursued this; the rest, just stepping quick, the means to an end. King of the Koopas would not catch foul Mario, nor would that maimed human be back in short order; He'd lick his wounds like the dog he is, only then to maybe regroup. No assurances, but there were many in the vein of Kamek... What Bowser didn't say to Wendy on the return-leg had everything to do with this. The castle turrets stood with shadows so high as to lick at the town, its pewter asphalt on avenues. Bowser's breath hardened; heat extruded in sharp bursts. A passing gnat flew ignorantly through it, and the roasted carcass fell to a chipped stone road. The streets were empty, and as the buildings in a third of this 'burg, torn or fractured... So there'd been more than Peach's saviour come to bust up peasants...  
  
    Wendy, though, had his thoughts on her tongue before he could spill them, alike as they oft were. "We skipped a barnburner of a party. G-... Good God, that pub had a brick wall blown out. There's an arm dangling." She wasn't scared nor sickened. It was her adding up the factors, deciding they'd see new things IN the palace. How could they not if such a scene happened, city in a disarray like a light air raid had botched a blitz. The hill a castle stood upon lay close enough for rain to run off onto main streets thereby. She looked up to Bowser; wrapped her hand around his arm, drawing strength. The ease of nerves within him from this might soften what dicoveries threw at them. There were smoke plumes around, though well-separated. Shouts from denizens, thankfully in leaving or evacuating rather than wails of mourners. Wendy felt how close of a call that this - whatever it went like - shaped up to. They ascended the incline from main street to the grounds of a sweeping courtyard; Wendy grunted and stopped, her heel had dug in a soft spot in the ground. Bowser waited up while she wrenched free, not too much effort required; but the moisture in the dirt was red, it discoloured her platform. She grumbled that the soldiers did a poor job of cleaning house... Just like the one with a supportive hand on her back might have. Slightly unnerved, they walked up in sight of the gate. She shared a nugget of wisdom. "It maybe made no difference that I told them I was leaving, or... It could've made the worst kind."  
  
    He felt sour grapes, but nodded, no judgement. "Guaging that takes a sort of practice. Repeating where you try, and survive it, that tells which is the lesser sword's dangle. The longer you live, the smarter you were."  
  
    She, despite a bloodied shoe, had an honest smile to wear. He'd considered she'd remember that, and take it to heart. The gate guards were at first shaky, king and princess approaching. A little jitter might be understood, pressure and such.  
  
    But they did the unthinkable. Two elites in armour, their spears tall, stepped to each other, closed a gap. Those halberds they lowered. Bowser and Wendy's face they stared on. The leftmost guard gave his head a shake, and said nothing.  
  
    He sweat litres when the monarch's mouth became a scowl, eyes red as a giant star. But his bravery held for a sentence. "I-I regret to tell you, it's not the best time to enter here your H-H-Highness."  
  
    Bowser - in outer calm that had NO veto power on his face - strolled up and didn't try to break through their walling. He simply grabbed he who spoke by each shoulder pad, the metal brace with roundness and ridges. It was like he talked to a long-lost friend in pose, while in tone, he spake so stern the guard could feel his nuts shrivel. "Yet you're going to let me. You have loved ones who would cry for you and your paycheck."  
  
    The elite Troopa leapt back the millisecond Bowser let go; when the king looked besides, the other one was as far to the edge as two feet could soundly stand; one bit further and he'd swim in the moat. Bowser tilted neck and cracked it. The edgeperching guard gasped, halfway to a coronary. They bowed deep and Bowser forewent their slight for now, busied as he went to the gate. Wendy's feet were timid behind him, then strong as she glared at two men who'd done something so rash. Her face was an open book for rage; the densest guard felt closer to a heart attack now than with the big man himself.  
  
    It may have stayed at this if the gate had opened. There was a leaded glass pane above, where the one responsible for raising it had full sight. He would know any and all who came up. But the wooden beams kept still, and vertical. Bowser's scowl leaked slobber; when he wanted, he could handily conceal that he foamed at the mouth. One knock would tell him what he wanted to know. His fist rapped the birch planks of that gate... He heard how solid it returned.  
  
    He didn't think it but just snarled it outright near Wendy, indirect with eyes groundward as veins throbbed in his head, up his arms. "It's barricaded."  
  
    Though he didn't look at her, she peered on his red cheek and shared the pulp of his boiling rage. "We're unwelcome!?"  
  
    It was this that made him glare her way, not at her but channeling chargrin. He developed what this meant, again in words for his-girl-the-uninitiated. "If Mario was back, I'd be sought for one-on-one, he worships a fair fight..." The fists clenched tighter. "And Kamek would not wait, we'd have been spellbombed to oblivion, my dentures would be dust over Desert Land!!"  
  
    The implications hit her. And Bowser's fist hit the beams of the gate, one impact, and they exploded in splinters. Logs fell onto his spiked bracelets, one got stuck on the point. This new 'club' he whipped around and whapped the silent guard so hard by, the poor bastard fell limp into the water alright, dead on the surface. The beam dislodged from this hit, konking the concrete lip above water. The log and he floated, while a man close-by fell also: A Hammer Bro, collapsed and fading on the threshold inside the ex-gate. Wood shards pierced his liver; he'd been the one so stupid as to try and ban his king. Now his hand clutched a pouring stomach, no use, the fluids just leaked through his fingers, bile and the red they'd all seen in droves. Bowser stepped on him, over his useless pleas... The foot pancaked his spleen and ground the wooden shrapnel in, and death came faster. Wendy stepped over him, lip just now curling in a slight unease. Walking on his smashed sternum to prove a point would just make her trip in those Louboutins.  
  
    She saw her father stop, again; and the clatter was all of why. The first floor was more than tumultuous but at sheer extreme; neither noble would have dreamed this happened to their home. Servants running mad, soldiers on their tail or warring in factions. Riots were ignited, fights and revelry cohabitant. Troops defied all order. There were lone front-liners assailing the hall; paintings were missing, pottery and artifacts. Beyond looting there was much worse to go up against... Goombettes and toad women who were captured subjects indentured, they screamed out or kicked away or sobbed as koopas ripped clothes from them, leapt on and assaulted. So few saw or heard the king; there was chaos, earsplitting and complete. Troops of all species and caste wrestled fatally, strangled fellow men and women for royal effects they'd lifted. Some were killed by the loyal for trying to abscond, some in a tug-of-war for who got to steal the lode, or at worst even which man got to harrass, penetrate and rape innocents. Mutiny. A breakdown of everything.  
  
    "IN MYYYY HOUSE!!!?"  
  
    They all went dead silent, those who weren't in actuality dead. Also discounting the scores of agonized calls for help, loudest now for serviceable reasons. The aide who stood at Bowser's feet, a Brolder, was strangely still, complacent. Bowser now focused to him after shattering eardrums; the short ball of rock could sweat, and that he did, no muscle moving an inch. Bowser somehow got hold of his ire for another two seconds. "Step back, inscrutable-you."  
  
    They all sensed the spectre of death in a denial of this, most of all the Brolder himself. So he clacked his huge feet backward.  
  
    Under him was a pile of coins, antiques. Shining and settling. No one had to ask who owned them. Leastly the head of state.   
  
    So Brolder had moved, as it would've been the last thing he didn't do. But he was made to learn there WAS no right exit, this lacked one. A huff, and Bowser's jaw opened wide as a snake; perhaps like a 'late' General. Blue flames flooded in torrents, made the whole room lit in cerulean, flashes in view of the terrified. It obscured the Brolder; eight seconds of hellfire. Bowser's lungs gave their max and he stuck right where his green toes planted, reinspiring. A cape swished, billowed in the heat given. There was no man left there, and the coins neither, but a puddle of red, small points of yellow intruding... Melted to a pond with the gold he lusted for. Joined indistinguishably.  
  
    Wendy's hand hid her mouth. It was their patriarch who did the talking, and all of it came laced with strength that made the men's nuts shrivel and the women's snatch further-parched. "Tell me what I've done to warrant this! I go in search of our aggressor, put MY OWN life in peril, and you turn EVERYTHING to MELEE!!" He put a fist in the floor, and half of them fell from the running fissure. "This is FANTASTIC while the hooded one plots. EVERYthing could be spied on, used against us in most GLORIOUS ERASURE!! HE IS WAITING, LUSTING, FOR ONE CHANCE TO MAKE OUR LIVES A MEMORY, AND HERE YOU GIVE HIM MULTITUDES!! AND IF I EVEN GET TO MY PERSONAL GRIEF, AT MY DOMICILE, FILLED WITH MALCONTENTS WHO THINK THE WORLD OF DESTROYING THEMSELVES, YOU WOULD KNOW NO MORE BECAUSE I'D END EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU IN THE TIME IT TAKES TO EXPRESS!!" He hiccupped. Pain in his chest made him clutch his heart, but the point compelled. "WHERE YOU STAND, YOU'RE MAKING A CHOICE WITH EACH BREATH DRAWN!! LISTEN TO ME WITH A MONK'S SILENCE AND YOU'LL HAVE CHOSEN LIFE, WHEREAS I WAGER ALL I AM AND EVER HAD THAT YOU HAVE NO SUCH OPTION WHERE THE PLUMBER OR THE WARLOCK ENTER IN. AND MY LOVELY DAUGHTER..." He swung to her, and in her first act of meekness thus far, she stepped back, tottering on legs burdened with her trembling. Her lips did the same, as he preserved no feelings. "SNEAKING OUT MY COPTER WAS THE WORST OF SET EXAMPLES. BEYOND, YOU MAY NOT BE BEHIND THIS, BUT THERE WOULD EXIST SIGNS THAT THEY MIGHT UNRAVEL, THOUGH YOU WERE SO SURE AS TO TELL ME THERE'S PEACE. AND I KNOW YOU WELL, VISION OF YOUR MOTHER, YOU WOULD SAY THOSE ARE UNRELATED, TWO SLIGHTS BUT IN TWAIN. FORGET CONNECTING DOTS, THEY'RE POINTS OF IGNORANCE AND I'LL DEFY ALL EXCUSE TO LINK THEM. I DON'T NEED EVIDENCE THAT YOU WERE FOOLISH, SHORTSIGHTED, UNVERSED IN OUR AFFAIRS, UNWISE TO OUR DEFENDERS' STATE, UNREADY TO LEAD NOR SPEAK FOR THOSE WHO DO. I THANK THE VERY WOMB BY WHICH YOU CAME TO ME, FOR NOT LETTING YOU POP OUT AS FIRST AND HEIR. YOU WILL HIT YOUR BEDROOM RUNNING, AND IF YOU LOOK BACK OR BRAY A SINGLE WORD, SO HELP ME I'LL PLACE YOU IN A TURRET AT THE EDGE OF TOWN, WHERE YOU MIGHT GUN DOWN THE EVENTUAL SIEGE BEFORE KAMEK GLEEFULLY KILLS YOU AND I CELEBRATE!!!"  
  
    Stunned quietude pervaded. Not one soul of any age had protest, voice or action, but were as the finest ivory statues in pieces underfoot from the chaos. Wendy's heels clacked on the cobblestone, on a mission to sprint. Get away from her father as quick as possible. Escape, not honour. Obedience that was incidental, as she watched every step going up the flights, taking two at a time in the most unsuitable of footwear. If she tripped and fell, the injuries could feel no worse than within; she knew her father's ways, his temper, and any other day a departure and roll of the eyes outside his eyeline was the sole required act. Today, and now, it felt different. Just a ball of ill will shot down because of commoners, as if they'd ever care. She had no latitude to say what she endured as who and what she was, or where she went from there. And the kar was wrecked, and his words were absolute. And every flicker of hope dimmed like a fog settled over it.  
  
    Obscured by this and self-judging, she reached her proper floor, reached in her hair and ripped out every pin. In sight of her bedroom doorway, she wiped all colour from her lips, smeared it on her left cheek in a slash-mark. Then the other one. She was where he ordered alright, but here mind was on phone charger, brush, extra clothes, suitcase. She knew she didn't want this. And he may disown her, strip the titles and acclaim from every facet of her. She even recited it, to herself while packing. "Princess Wendy of Dark Land. Lady Wendy. The Honourable... Flipping Wendy Koopa. Plain and simple." She dropped her brush in, and all but threw her jeans and shirts in the center of a Samsonite. "Easy to remember. That might come in handy." She had compiled it, zipped it up, slung it over her shoulder and walked right back out.  
  
    There were soldiers waiting. A pair in elite garb, with scars and glum composure, a blockade for the hall. Her guts told her the truth, these were sent for assurance.  
  
    The taller one spoke and confirmed. "Wendy, his Highness requests you be smart about this. Don't make something horrible necessary." His rasp fit like a glove. The short, stouter partner stood in broad support.  
  
    She held onto the suitcase. Her principles were equal to their armour, but no weapon. Instead, she stared, and put her chin so firm she could pass for imagery of lockjaw. The short one took a tiny pace back.  
  
    Tallguard tried to open his mouth, appeal once again to her and louder. She nipped this in the bud. "You can stop me all you like, and who knows, you might even get promotions. They'll be enjoyed and a privelege right up to the night you're snoring in your chambers and you don't hear me slide up the boxspring, knife in my teeth."  
  
    Her eyes didn't smolder, they engulfed. Her foot took a step forward. The fattie took two to the rear, and though the slower of the two, he made waves in the carpet hightailing it out of there. The armed-drinking-straw swung around, took a look back with the glisten of sweat by his eye, and somewhat tactfully beat cheeks away as well. She was once again alone.  
  
    She wouldn't cry, even as it all poured in, faces that were absent. No noise in adjoining rooms, where brothers partied or chilled. Her one parent was beside himself, and on this day, dead to her.  
    The suitcase rattled against her, tapping her underarm on stomp after stomp, back to the stairs, back down to earth's level, emerging from above to cleanups and tears from the loyalists. There was vast room in the vestibules; many had been removed, never to come back. Likely never to see their cliques or loves for a final goodbye. This much they'd bought for themselves, but she hadn't. And only one thing would be a fix and cool her heart.  
  
    Not out the front door, but bursting into the royal dock for the klown kar. She pushed down the first soldiers, one landed where his spear's back end sliced his hairline. Two men quickly tended him, one was left to fend her off. He tried to swing at her, and saw bright lights when she dropped the satchel, leaned in and gave a left hook to his liver. Roy had taught her something valuable in his shit-years after all. He would not get up; an explosion happened inside him.  
  
    Leaving him and his death rattle, letting two dopes try and pat the bleeding on the bravest one, she picked up her things, slung them right in the upright kar. There had been work done already; so the bastard of a king had his own dishonesty, making out like it would be broke down for the duration. So much for that, she thought, as her hands engaged the buttons and started it. Ran like a dream, she smiled, and her purpose she carried with her thick as every article stuffed in that bag.  
  
    "WHOA!!"  
  
    She did a 180 once more, prepared to hop over the kar's bucket's rim and sock another stupid pawn. Instead she found the face of Iggy, who in his braininess took note of everything around. There was little to explain as he came up, jumped right in with her and resigned himself to destiny. Fuck knows he was about to encounter it the second they left.  
  
    He said one thing before the bay doors could open, bathe them in natural light, moments from takeoff. A one-word question. "Justice."  
  
She caught his meaning, but what he thought was her motivation, wans't. She corrected him kindly. "Guilt."  
  
    He put a look of curiosity on her. She was used to this appearing on him when and wherever, and nothing prodded her to answer it. So when the bay was open, off they went without a phrase's hesitance.  
  
    ... Four minutes later, he'd processed in full the sounds as they'd flew off.  Problems behind them, in the halls, on the lawns. Scrambling and screams. Outlines of what the men left behind would do. First thing, Bowser would be informed. It went without saying, they weren't coming home. Her face was still; fixed to the broad swath of hills, grassy nothing as they cleared the palace borders, she didn't do as Iggy did, who gazed down at his people like the ants they resembled, clustering on high ground to watch them go. Fewer in number, high sounds, clear desperation. At least some of them who weren't in awe or questioning, extended hands to the sky. He glimpsed this like twigs rising. They wished to go along, to be taken with them, just to leave the madness.  
  
    Wendy didn't give two shits what their father did to quell rebellions.   
  
    Her nose tickled in evening chill, and her mind spun. Then a choice was made.  
  
    She blurted it to Iggy, who leaned back as he sightsaw. "I'm swinging through Braffity. We'll pick up Haley."  
  
    Referring to the neighbourhood of her bestie, she threw Iggy for a mental loop. "S-sis, I support whatever this indicates, but... Well not a but, so much as an addition..."  
  
    She cut him off, still patient to him in tone. "If I need your help, you won't be left wondering." She heard nothing back, and so tacked on something prudent. "... Thank you."  
  
    He nodded. Somehow she didn't need to look at him to know.  
  
    The ride was four awkward minutes. The vehicle coughed, a few dips here and there with loose bearings, but the rotor was in fine new condition. Iggy counted rooftops as they went along, just the ones whole and not destroyed by blitz. It was no different than counting deformed pellets in a cereal bowl, as much as they didn't dominate the number of houses. Far more were wrecked, or gone. Spots in the streets that had dark redness, the shape of persons who were also absent... There was sometimes little more to do than drag the bodies off, and worry over stains of blood later. Iggy wished to walk up, and lay a hand on her shoulder. But by the time he thought of it, they descended. The greenspace near to her chum's front door danced jigs from the copter's air. Haley knew the sound of the  whoosh, the kar's blade. By the time they touched down, she was out her front door, tightening a blue jacket.  
  
    Wendy stretched out her hand, beckoned, and when Haley skittered up they were joined at the palm; the princess pulled her up and in. Ex-princess, it could very well be, no way to know that now. But tasks called. And Haley had her concerns. "D'you mind telling me what's the hurry, girl? I think we were 14 the last time you skipped the castle and fetched me this way." There was only one way to take an unannounced dropin of this caliber. All the same she had no idea what gave, but started getting a glimmer and a smirk crossed her lips. "Another group date? Is Morie somewhere exotic, and... Iggy's got somebody?" She put her face toward the nerdy prince, and had said it with respect rather than a hurtful surprise. But he looked away anyway.  
  
    "Haley", her friend and maybe-equal said from the controls, "If you had the chance to turn everything around, but had to set off a reaction first, and didn't grasp how... Would you still go?"  
    Haley went through a rainbow of impulse. Befuddled, then realizing the weight of what she'd haplessly entered, then a total enabler in the rightest of ways. Her voice sang it like the clown she felt like, riding in this. "I'd go for broooke, bi-otch."  
  
    Wendy smiled, conviction all over her, stern but made happy. They took off, lifted to the skies and into stronger breeze. The journey would be long, but the river was friend to her memories. The same one followed so recently, two dudes in green-and-brown blazing the way. Their faces in her mind's eye, and the very reason her real orbs now leaked a mist, growing into tears. They wouldn't be alone.  
  
    More vocal morsels streamed from Haley's mouth, loud to cover the engine's clatter yet soft in tone. "I'm so glad my side of town was overlooked... This is just... Heartwrenching..."  
    Wendy readily replied; she was warm only to the two she mobilized right now in accompliceship. "It's not the worst I've seen. But no question it's the closest. And I'll tell you this so long as I think I'm booted from the good graces, there's one that I trusted to keep it on the run. He trusted me. Then he ate that idea, shat it out and deanchored. Who am I now?" It was rhetorical. And six eyes - counting Iggy's 'extra pair' - locked onto the woman who just broke a swearless streak with gumption.  
  
    She didn't think Haley would roll with it. "... I don't care who you are. I think he's done all of that concept you needed someone to." Wendy's T-zone untensed itself, not realizing how on-edge it had been before this beat it back. Haley could always be counted on to know of whom she talked. A personal talent, honed over years of the frankest of outpourings.  
  
    Night fell in and the shine of a base-mounted spotlight came on. It traced the stream beautifully, and faster than the headway made at points before, in the daylight and as courier for a gun. Iggy's legs shook; the speed and narrow sight put jitters in his totality. He would fight them, and that he did, reigning them in. He and Haley both saw on their captain the fight Wendy cared for, pursued. Invited. A warrior awakened.  
  
    Haley wrapped her coat and stepped to Wendy with love and trust. Things had to be designated though, their target and the next few hours, equally. "Even if you can't nail down stuff about method, I'd really like it if I knew where we're going."  
  
    "Away. To a place Daddy never knew about." Wendy's nose tickled; she felt the dust from a thousand earlier explosions, air pollution made of concrete and plastic vapors. She sneezed, and the kar wobbled. "You do, though." She then held up her hand, in a claw-type display of fingers. It was recognized.  
  
    Haley stuffed every bit of her fear and was there for the brightest two she knew. Chuckling, she held her stomach lightly. "I'm touched, a little. I thought you would have forgot that long ago. There's been times I almost did."  
  
    Wendy, in the face of all, let her own smile break through. "You don't completely forget your first girls' club. I wonder if that lean-to is still up, we used river stone for most of it. I hate to say I'm counting on it, but..." She diminished, thinking on the private space from ten years before, a few young kids who left on a trek. It had been a short time they'd known each other, but got along like true besties. Little Wendy never questioned Haley's old teal jumper from the back of the closet, or the habit of cleaning her ears with candles... In return, Haley didn't freak out when the stuff Wendy had packed for their 'scouting day' looked a lot more like weaponry. Or at least boys' toys that were staunchly good replicas. The Wendy of the present, clearly troubled, knew if the shelter had survived, so too did the cache. Daddy taught her how to hide everything from Winchesters to anti-aircraft stock, safe from the elements, free from animal digging. He'd shown her well, and now, being cast off it was her responsibi-  
  
    -A gigantic BOOM assaulted them, straight from the starboard side. Iggy cried out while his hips hit the car's inner lip, and were thankfully just too short for center-of-gravity to pitch him over. He came down in a heap though, and Haley fared poorly, squealing her maximum while jamming hands on her ears. Wendy's neck bobbled, her nostrils flared. A sneer with all her teeth came out in vehemence, and she pushed the gas lever to full-bore forward. She knew that explosion. It was not on them, hence why they were still aloft. But magic had all the time in the world from a pursuer.  
  
    Iggy inched up on his hands, pushed up off the cold floor with a group of grouses. Cuts on his hand from a slice, hairline-fractures in his tailbone, he had license to whine. But getting to his feet, he faced behind them, and two white circles drifted. Floating over the riverbed, keeping exact pace and distance. Two glass lenses in a pair of spectacles, a Toadie's. And then a whooping scream of war.  
  
    Red flaming lumps lit the night sky and bathed the kar in visibility. Haley went from holding her ears to her scalp, terrorized. Wendy swooped to the left, juked it down and right, going serpentine. From her efforts the ball of heat and sure death sailed over them, diagonal and twenty feet up-left. Wendy smelled a smolder, and realized it was her hair; even with that berth, the spell could singe. She'd never thought of power like that in their hands. Not once had she seen it from their tier, simple aides of Kamek. What had he become?... How impervious?  
  
    It was settled then, this MADE the need for her to find those supplies. She kept on overdrive, careful to watch the stream below and its bends. She couldn't afford missing the turnoff; she had forgotten how long of a hike her child self took with Haley to start that fort. But it was closing in; her place to set down, and the murderer tailing her. This in fact was his status, far as The Great Leader had managed him... He would reap great treasures for every insolent head he cut off or quenched in purifying fire. Kamek the Wise had it tallied. And he had steady hands.  
  
    With the next full store of power he wielded a sphere of flame white as snow and hot as its dire opposite, dwarfing houses. In cackles - spittle raining on grass and reeds below - he cast a burning wreck, and in beauty its evil glow burst out on every hill and contour of land. Iggy saw the countryside like daylight, the final second before he ducked, and saved his very life by doing so. Their left flank melted as it sliced; his lab coat's tails fried, and instantly their cruise was a hobbled, sweeping dive.  
  
    Iggy hung onto the jut of a coupler with one hand, helped by a rivet; otherwise he dangled out the side of a kopter now 1/3 gone, simply removed. He wailed as pain truly hit him, skin peeled from his neck and back, hot fibres searing his spine and sides. Haley grabbed on the kar's lip, failed and fell; had Iggy not reached out and caught her coat by the collar, a fall would have been her last. More out of the kar than in, her screams curdled blood, and Wendy let loose a petulent yell. Her years fighting and surviving, all before her first cramps or box of Tampax, took her back to those very days. Could almost feel a giant bow again in her hair, the comfy Buster Browns modified for heels and sequins. Eight-year-old her steered the rest of the kar as it roared, forking air over the misshapenness of a ruined flyer... Present-day-her had the motives and heart to fuel. Mayday, but for no one who could listen. Her hair stretched, pulled at her scalp as they went lower, lower, and one more blast went above. Iggy begged with Haley to hold on, her one hand on the side of the floor and the other out and flailing in the open. That melting had acted on the edge where it lost the rest to heat; she could not grip a smooth roll of metal, no friction. He strained and yowled, gracefully pulling her up, seeing less and less time to make it happen. There was a shape on the low horizon, broad and square, by the river; they were at such speed, four seconds later they were upon it. The kar clipped the lean-to... It had been the very thing of her seeking that sent them into a spin so violent no one was inside by the time it met ground. This was their greatest luck; tossed out by centrifugal force, they didn't get beheaded or maimed into bone shards when it tumbled end-over-end, skipping dirt like a stone does water, busting up into a shower of parts, raining death by hot lead and concussiveness on foraging nightgoers. Many lizards and birds were offed; the kar was no more, disintegrated and a flat zone of shrapnel. No movement on the ground. Their assailant put his cackle to a second use, and rode its sound and his broom off into the stars, upriver same as they had been going. He saw kills, and that was that. No one screamed back as he glided in peace onto the sure rewards of reporting his deed.  
  
    Wendy's lungs burned. Her head pounded, on one side more than the other. She huffed, and judged how much she could feel. Lying on the mud stomach-down, she could move her legs. Spectacular. With new rations of hope, she pulled up her elbows, got her face off the wet silts. A cough sent a mudpie out her mouth to the bunched-up grass, where it belonged instead of her gumline. Hair was matted. She reached up, and rage took hold of her for one raspy shriek; half of it was as wasted as the kar, frayed and sizzled past the point of repair. She looked to the left, then ahead. Then to the right, and felt panic well up; she saw nothing and no one. In groans of real, horrid pain she started moving, spinning slow as could be with her navel as pivot point. There, she could relax when she spotted two figures, and motion. Iggy leaned up, rubbed his cheek; he quickly shut his legs when he realized how much clothing had been blown off. There was no laughter though, and looking out in a daze, he heard his name from Wendy's tongue over his own ears' ringing. Focusing as best he could, he saw blurriness with her color palette; even if he wasn't gravely injured, the glasses were missing, likely just another part of the scene of the crash now.  
  
    "W-Wendy?" He sputtered, tasting iron. He'd bit his lip, but had the consciousness to tell he had dodged mortal wounds. "That's you I'm... Presuming?"  
  
    "Yeah. Don't move!" She wheezed back, winded but defying it to make enough noise. She couldn't know his condition, but knew hers was stable, discounting the stinging ache in her hand. Two fingers broken, those that latched on the gas lever to the very last moments. Iggy winced and held his side, in clear agonies. There was hemmhoraging, but in small shares. He might mend it with pressure and a bit of time. Wendy reached out, sank her hands in the soft mud. Seven nails had survived as at least a chip, the other three lost, one ripped completely from its socket and dangling. She started to shout, then ducked her head down and bit on her bloody muddy blouse. It kept her quiet as she faced the pain, digging in the wet clay and pulling herself in. Then another time clawing in the soil like a shovel, and pulling up to the level. In this way she crawled to her brother, still too winded and woozy for much more. But she made it, and once she lacked him by a foot's length he reached and tried to pull her as he had Haley. But thanks to the first, he moaned and quickly had to stop, letting her finish the trek to put them head-to-head. His arm was sprained and head was out of sorts... A scientist's eyes whipped to and fro, almost hallucinatory. "Feels like... I'm being sucked in...  Can't move..."  
  
    "You'll be ok. It's... Just the film on the mud, it's hard to lift and let air in." She made colossal phrases for someone in her state. And seeing him alive, and Haley just beyond, hope hadn't died. She leaned in, kissed him once on the cheek, then dry on the lips, sniffling. They bumped foreheads. She was so happy in this moment.  
  
    Her voice went out again. "Haley, what's your 411?" She called out to the girl who rolled, arm going up with weak fingers aloft. There was movement, but no answer. She tried again. "Haley... Up here, behind you. Answer me?" She made it a question, looking up from her position but to the scalp of her friend, whose coat bunched up around the chest. It must have been too restrictive. Wendy clawed into dirt again, but only once; she felt the first lessening of soreness, and a smidgen of breathing room in the literal. Once she made her way to beside Haley she could properly crawl. She got there, and saw her friend's pupils, her inhale and exhale. But it was heavy. Bumps stood on the back of Wendy's neck. Her heart seemed to jump. What she saw meant something, in a way she knew too well. The same past that taught her battle, courage, instilled also the bleak answer for what this was.  
  
    Wendy didn't hesitate. She dropped on her hands, one on one side and one over Haley to the far shoulder. Under her was a woman wrapped in ermine, rattling inside, eyes open and straight on hers. They had no fright to be seen, but warmth. She was whole outside, but held together. Wendy's throat made her voice leave again, such a lump building. She had all the clues that the person under her lay in pieces.  
  
    They were so near, the fort's igneous boulders had a smell to them. Haley's mouth moved, as did the water they heard. Both put off only wordless babbles. In Haley's case, they became whispers. Wendy's lids scrunched up, holding back a stream of moisture. But it lost its own battle there, letting tears down her nose, to her chin, beads in the moonlight. Haley struggled. She formed quiet syllables. Wendy read lips and took in everything she saw. The noblewoman was thanked, then forgiven, in that order. Haley let it all be known what made this... Alright. A good end. She reached up, made sure her palm rest on the back of who'd always be princess. The presence soothed. Haley's smile had never been clearer, purer.  
  
    The arm relented, and fell. No more breaths.  
  
    Now, and only now, Wendy allowed her own speech. "Haley... Haley... C'mon girl, I... I can't... N-no..."  
  
    She wouldn't go on. Her arms went to the fallen limb of her friend, and closed the hand to a fist. This she did instead of tending Haley's eyes, open, now devoid and empty. Iggy heard her now, high and strong. "She went out honourable... She died brave a-... And..." She could do no more. Surveyed the form of a fallen ally, her first and closest. Sobs began, laid over Haley's broken body. Grief flooded out and her weight braced her, holding Haley, hugging tight against the chill and loss. She could hear Iggy join her. A colourless moon poured glow on their weeping.  
  
    He tried vainly to talk in help. "You're right. She fared better than a multitude today... A finer place awaits, she's already there." He wiped the wetness from his face, and sank into mourning.  
    Wendy had seen it happen. She looked on Haley, fallen and still so beautiful... A pebble fell, far behind her gorgeous locks or the two souls remaining; motion at the point of the old fort. Even in this horror the noblewoman heard it, and the clang beyond, as something else hit the ground, a more metallic clack. Fear was not in this, no person either, but hearkening back to childhood. They were industrious that year. Nothing lay beneath the dirt, as she just now remembered: they'd double-layered the walls. Wendy's inner soldier bound her up in strength, made her raise from this low, sad embrace. Her neck turned, and she had only drive when Iggy heard his sister, duty in the cracking voice. "Do you have your cell?"  
  
    "Wh-what?... Yes, I believe so..."  
  
    She hesitated none. "Gimme it. Please." Courtesy as the alto came back to her, within 'throwing distance' of bass. Also in a throw's distance were the barrels and stock fallen out the stone wall, jumbled up but such a breeze to get once she crawled back to it. Iggy reached with pain into his pocket, lobbed Wendy his phone, and she was on her way to their new armory while she caught it underhand.  
  
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    In the king's chambers a vase lay broken; he had roared past its point of integrity, shattering it. On his bed he sat, face in his wrinkled hand, lifelines hiding a snout and scales and tremors. His chest burned where he'd felt the leap. Cleanup carried on below, as things were in order now, controlled. Outside, smoke rose in acrid curtains from piles of the dead and gone, some who fought Mario, some who cut each other down in the mutinous bedlam. They ignited the same; turned to ash the same; this had been the message when he ordered them disposed of, instructing his very closest. The circle was tighter now... Not just pared down with the plethora of killed, but hand-picked in great haste by His Majesty. Trust was dissipating. Nothing took for granted, after this day and its trials. His one high request they had honoured; no one would enter his bedroom, unless they too yearned to fly as a collection of cinders.  
  
    There were whispers of problems else. Unrest in the farthest towns. Absorption by the force of Kamek, where whole regions had been sacked, pillaged, razed like nothing Bowser saw in his tightest victories. A rumour that his triage, even, the hospital run by and for this crown, brought in a piece of scum for treatment. The one who'd taken his name, with a Jr., and in adulthood ran off with full dishonour. A relationship unthinkable. If gossip be correct, and Morton WAS under his nose... Hell's fury is a quotient, stacked up against theorems. Thus did his despising run, that endless.   
  
    But how in God's name - or absence, as it felt - could he act on hearsay? It would not be done. The same ones who had scuttlebutt on that would say the riot was just boredom, or his son's leanings natural; idle thoughts of the underclass. Damnit, this was NO time to scrutinize a chunk of it. He'd summoned the platoons. They would group up, ride their armoured tanks, airships, the full arsenal to freedom. He coughed, flinging phlegm. This is what it came to. Liberation, maybe not as yet, but so long as Kamek lived they were free no more.  
  
    He said it again in his own mind; no matter what they thought, how they kept faith or continued bowing to their true king, peace there wasn't. On this he felt responsible; his largest limit, the fact he couldn't keep from putting it on himself, wearing the burden. They would do that to him anyway. Stab his ego and point every finger his direction, while they kneel.  
  
    And he would have stood, picked up his bed and flung it through the bricked walls, if things didn't ring in his ear. Literally, his telephone, red and white in airbrushed streaks on a gold plate on a cherrywood table on the silken rugs. For which a select few ever had the number.  
  
    Itching to pick it up, clench and crush its neck earpiece-to-mouthpiece, he nevertheless didn't. What would it fix? Instead he darted up, sneered in blue flames from a freckled schnozz, and stomped over. Daintily cold, he repaired some of his own ire: the answer lacked all commitment. "Start talking. Make it good or I find you."  
  
    Though it was calming to be petty, what greeted him reversed this. The first few words put his eyes to a vicious red. They sent his tail to whirring, so fueled into blaze. But he caught every bit. Listened, received. The temper weakened. Nothing to say, and while he could have stopped her at any time, he resisted. She laid out every cause for this, and for hers. By the time she said farewell, a Shyguy timidly knocked on his grand door. Pouring sweat under its costume bag, it was dumbstruck. Moreso when the Koopa king yanked the door open, so hard it broke at the hinges, and he let it fall sideways like opening scissors. "May I assume importance of this?" The ruling face breathed hot as lava, but simmering.   
  
    So this messenger had the chance and could spit it out. "M-M-M-Mmmario is, is, is found."  
  
    It shouted the last in triumph, as if squashing the stutter even mattered afterward. It wanted to look happy, respecting as it did its monarch. What it stared up to was tired, almost detached, but not close to directionless. Bowser talked down with a king's ticker and a father's strength. "Dispatch reserves and hold him off. I don't expect I'll be killing him today." He paused. Nothing happened facially, as the Shyguy beheld. "If he's outside of here he's on the run. Cowardice is as difficult as eating cake." It was said to compare them, but to hide the likes of other things. He had little optimism; a city surprise-attacked, family squabbles to a great extreme, rivals and turncoats, loss of faith in the throne. He might never scrub the plumber from his life... He'd have to be more able to do so. Less of a fuckup. These he considered, pulled into the chasm of doubt.  
  
    The Shyguy interrupted his inner storm. "Yessir your majesty. And about the r-rrruckus in the hospital?"  
  
    Bowser's T-zone went from mauldin to attentive, pronto. "If it's the same as the dimwitted mob I came home to on the ground floor, have them turned in to the firing squad. I don't want them around Ludwig, he has much to see and do." It could have been concern for a married man, or a loaded statement. The messenger knew not... And had not finished.  
  
    "No, the young boy tearing up the facility's other side. I think... He's a known associate of Lemmy's."  
  
    A further deepening of furrows on the king. "Is he now." Lemmy flashed through his head; he remembered the recentmost outfit, those fatigues. His tone altered. "You can just say friend, in case of him." But happy or comforted he wasn't. "What's the damage and the terms of why?"  
  
    "H-h-he didn't say. But they're afraid it's linked to discontent, over what-"  
  
    THIS the king cut off ruefully. "I don't care what a protest means, in the case of now. Today." He wiped his nose; extended heat had started to make it run, as was the norm. "I will go. I can use it as excuse to survey Ludwig's condition. He has been weighing on me. He is alright amidst this, affirmative?"  
  
    The messenger seemed hesitant, but not for the portion that answered it. "Sir, yes sir. But they worry over Morton a-and his partner, I mean being critical like they a-... Are, and that close to death."  
  
    The eyes of the monarch shook. In a way, so did much of what lay behind them. Bowser wouldn't ask what partner; that was filed behind the follower. "Take me to him. Retrieve my sword.  
  
    The Shyguy crinkled; within his mask, he contorted in unnamed grief. His thoughts were not the king's.   
  
    Bowser added on, lamentingly. "I've a wayward daughter, hostage son, they're out of all reach and mind. The heir's air carriage is... How do I say this, TOTALLED!!" He blew back the Shyguy's mask; he had his stomach turn in disgust, and the hood and facecover were repositioned, aligned back. King of the koopas raved and raged on... Yet a sinking heart mixed in. "This was the day chose for me to be humbled. I won't inquire why. I can accomplish one thing before the traitors come in on us. Prepare me for the task that my spirit dreads."  
  
    To be continued...

Source: https://sofurry.com/s/V1Y82Xyn
Part of the series Koopalings: The Teenage Years
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