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KOOPALINGS: THE TEENAGE YEARS

by Eightane / Foxy Boy

CHAPTER XXI: NOTHING VENTURED

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White-hot ammo poured from the "icegun", Bret's tool for holdling the Toadies at bay. Kamek's killers came from all boroughs of the city and moreso its ashes; none though could approach the palace, for as soon as they entered range the three men aloft rained death upon them; or in Bret's case, caught them in a gelatin, as the moat's ice which floated skyward would swallow them like a feeding protozoan, and still fly into the blue, higher, higher, until they froze to death with the world's finest view to send them off hellbound.

He pumped fist, and adjacent to him Todd sent off a massive shell from his chosen 'arm'. When it clobbered a Toadie in white cloak, the white gave way to red and a giant hole in the evil aide's midriff. There was no time where he knew he'd been impaled; death was instant and merciless. His contemporaries flew right on towards the end of them, never slowing, grieving. Nothing. No pause and zero human weakness from the magic men who lived only to ruin the King. They knew not where he was; it was guessed he was in his castle but all came speculative, and they staked their being on it, either case. Inside the windows three young koopas hooped and hollered, almost partying while their hands managed weapons no mortal was ever meant to have. But it worked, and they controlled the output, just so to where some could boast.

"One more for the frying pan!!" Bret postured, watching Morie take over the lightning-halberd. He threw weight around, hell-bent on disemboweling the miscreants. His teeth were a slice of white through the black of the slitted pane as Toadies saw from outside, before seeing nothing ever again. He could not shirk the fever of gladness, the testosterone inherent with wasting those murderers. Every body dropped was one that had bought his ticket for this with the blood of innocent civilians. He sounded seven feet tall as he laid into them. "Ain't no waypoint for these slimeballs, they're goin' down before a dog could lick himelf!"

Morie laughed; he wasn't one to share in bragadocio but took it for the spectacle it was. He felt larger, like he'd burst out of his shirt and trousers, as the gun did the same might-ening to him as had happened to Todd before. The threads over him held but his hand didn't; in firing a charge, he hadn't readied his arm for kickback, so though his blast hit a line of Toadies plum-center the apparatus flew back out his hand, and chucked a wall. Chunks came off; its arcs of voltage flickered and died.

"Damn stupid thing!" He yowled, more judging himelf than the gun he just destroyed. Bret called out "Bad hands, big-M'!" to his chargrin as he moved over to another gun; this one had the strangest shape among them, its lines invoked a praying mantis. Two stems of metal branched off from the main barrel and bent down towards the holder's position. They were moveable, on joints; With minimal thought the trio's smartest brain figured out they were there to connect behind him as a harness. Bravely he strapped it on and pressed the lever, which filled the barrel with energy so strong the room itself seemed breathed on by a kerosene heater. The belly of his shirt singed as it streamed a blue mist out the window; another beam they all watched intently, ignorant of what it might do.

The accomplishment was great; mists turned out to be a seeker-trail, which poured through the air in twists that wouldn't fall one single inch. They turned 'round themselves, bridged gaps between the corkscrew, formed up like a model of DNA. They may very well have been at microscopic sizes, which came apparent when the mists found sorcerers on brooms that rode on unblinking and fearless. The terror of them oncoming narrowed when their bodies wracked as Morie's munitions showed their nature... Blue shine sped into their ears, noses, the beaks of those with mouths open. Moments later their bodies would inflate, triple in size, then lacerate... Flesh was loosened from bone, the skin and organs simply fell and sloughed off. Piles of body pieces strewn upon the courtyard grounds, Toadie after Toadie. None of them had broke past the line of 300 meters out; castle and survivors both stood and withstood. The cooks, soldiers, maids that huddled down at ground-level reminisced, or played cards, or gathered around Bowser to hear from him, the state of their broken lands or that of his sons and daughter, where they may yet be. The king seemed to think it was Wendy up high, with magnificent weapons scrubbing their foes... Or he made it out to be and proved himself a convincing storyteller, no one could be sure right now. The castle's guardian three believed him there with their palace friends, familiar subjects and soldiers, and they stood right. No one hooked and compelled to his words, of now and its import or the yarns he'd spin on the older days, of might and magic and forts and floating platforms, would care how on-the-ball he spoke. And all the children of this packed foyer knew was that the bodies outside, the explosions and fallout, they weren't scary anymore. Each one was good news for them. Every dead helper of Kamek's was another set of seconds or minutes to sing songs or play tag, or lay their heads on parents for a nap, or even taste egg-less cake batter from the kitchen's kindest.

Bret slapped Morie's back and felt camrauderie with a duke, which was familiar to a point he smiled wider. "Man you SCOURED that pond scum out there! Lookit 'em fall apart!!"

"Y-yeah!..." Morie had joy but knew a nausea in the pits of him. Not raised on CoD or Medal of Honour like these happy twits, he felt so alone when firing a gun no matter how it was the only right way here. But no conflict flamed inside of him. He held onto the heatproof trigger and ignored how the gun fit over him like a jetpack; more steaming angels of death went out to the lines and platoons of Toadies, and not one showed immunity. Every enemy earned horrible final moments. He looked over to Todd, whose shellshooter made short work of the dolts who flew ahead of the nanokillers. "You're accustomed to that thing, it seems."

Todd cackled, changed by the madness of war if only for these moments. "They signed the check, I'm just cashin' it!" He was rattled but hiding it as expert as a teenager can. Another shot fired off, another gurgling yell from the soulless Toadie who felt clear pain as his stomach fell out the entry-hole at his ribs, still attached to the entrails. They hung on like a bag on a hose as the whole man freefell and was expired before ground-impact scattered his parts to randomness. Todd looked over to Bret and both men showed just a pittance of the shakes they felt, thriving and winning though locked in with profound fears. "You got anything else for those sons-o'-bitches? They're dodging your lift-ice-bull." He said it with no judging, just observing how the smartest had begun to juke around the jellied freeze what climbed to the sky and would doom them with one touch. Some were getting through until Todd's shells wasted them. Even one was too many.

There was no offense Bret felt, Todd's words were true. He moved away from the icer and looked around the room; there was many a choice, and for a few breaths he panicked, not knowing what looked most dependable, strongest, best. Todd started barking behind him, swearing at the fact that waves just kept coming and thicker now. They lost ground. When Bret finally chose a replacement - stubby-ended, two triggers and a firing pin on the side like a grenade - the circle of exclusion was 250 meters. He nearly dove onto the windowsill, elbow out to the very edge of the perch, and tried the first trigger. No spray. He banged the handle on the stonework of the window, tried it again. Zero change.

"Hey!" Morie shouted just as Bret looked ready to throw it out the opening. He remembered what to say next from a bad film, his personal fave. "Why don't you try pulling the other one?"

Bret's eyes rolled as far as they would go at himSELF, for the flub of forgetting. Horrors of war were too real for him to keep wits, but he did the obvious, and when the second trigger pulled, again, nothing. He was beside himself, fright in his eyes. His neck had his head swinging turbulent, at a loss for what to do next.

"BRET!" Todd groused, less-diplomatic in tone than Morie. "Pull the pin thingy!!" He hiccupped, as his hair was winged by the spittle of a weak magic blast. One Toadie had managed to reach him before going down in wrecked parts; the window fared worse, a clump of stone had disintegrated where it took the spell more directly. Had this been Todd's head he'd be deader than the armies before them.

With haste Bret set the gun on the sill for stability and yanked out that pin. Thrice in succession - two times for the first trigger, once for the second - a plasmaball screamed from the nozzle. It, too, chased the enemy down like Morie's streamer, but went for the neck. A midair dance from green plasmatic fire, ripping through carotid arteries. Showering the ground with blood, as it's all that remained of soulless Toadies. No attachment to each other, yet cut down so easy when they failed to change their routes or even switch place with one another. It would seem they were programmed to keep a straight heading now, the shortest path to siege on the palace. It didn't matter how bad they were at it if there were thousands. Millions.

Morie himself lost some thread of composure. "We can't drop them all day and night! A plan would help!!" He yelled to no one specifically. It wasn't taken that way.

"I don't have a plan, prince-wannabe!!" Todd screamed out, smelling the smoke from his locks. It had nothing to do with how Morie carried himself, just a moment tinted with the desperate. All three, holding off a force they failed to understand. The blasts kept on, and now pieces of the castle walls sloughed off when the lightest enemy magic got within reach. It was more and more often. Down below the singing stopped, those few servants that had started to. Card games were ruined as the cards shook out of organized stacks into useless disarray. Fathers held their kids. Todd's marksmanship and the sheer fatal ways of Morie's sidearm bought them time, but that may have been the long and short of it.

"Fuckin' crimeney" Bret scoffed. His halfhearted swear was in-kind with a fading faith. He hadn't much push to look forward if they were their own guardians and this is how it unfolded. He started to drop his gun, but a shot of reality hit him, who all would be involved outside of them if they falter. He refocused aim and dropped a few Toadies with the slightest effort.

"That's doing it!" Morie encouraged, all he could think to say. With hope's dimming there were few things that might help the outlook.

Bret, though, had items to mind, no matter that he found strength to fire again. "All the time with the nobles, y'know, I didn't think it meant runins with this. I didn't sign up to be Patton."

"None of us did, smarty." sniped Wendy's BF. "I mean it's thanks to her that I can hold a 9-millimeter proper. That's a world away from... From now."

Todd wanted to be shitty, but knew a good emotion when he heard it; the result split the difference. "We know you love her, buddy. It's assumed."

Morie opened his mouth, then closed it and took on a slim smirk. Memories could give him peace now. Walks in the park, nights at the skate rink. The last meal they shared. Her giggle when he was close, her glossed lips. His shirt he clutched tight over top of his chest. He had a billion reasons to live out more images with her; each an intent unto itself.

The other two had pictures of their own, inside minds. Big air they caught off jumps in the light of morning. Heelflips and Pop Shove-Its off of trash bins or those posts that kept cars out of greenways. The parks, the greenways, buildings... They were inside of a past now. Brought down by the bastards, too many to number.

In a way, Todd grew up to a degree as it sank in. He stayed focused out there but talked to Morie again. "We're happy for her. She never had an ill word about you. That's got a high value attached." It surely did, as many a man could never say that and be truthful.

Morie smiled now, the most he would today. With conviction he tagged more Toadies and they hit the dirt with fractions intact. "When we finish this, I'm buying her a Lambo. I don't care how I gotta do it. Hell I might sift through the bricks of a bank, it's nobody's money now." The very thought alone put a lump in his throat; empathy hurt worst. But if it went to anyone, his heart said it should be her.

A nod from Todd, approving. He'd grown accustomed now to where he 'posed' between shots, needing to wait for the gun's charge speed anyhow. Bret flicked Trigger 1, jacked the pin and hit Trigger 2 before it even cooled, into one HELL of a rhythm. Morie sweat the most, less gung-ho nor versed with FPS's that brought fun with the other two. They didn't care he was raised differently, it was no problem. They killed equally. They killed to live.

The three-man team worked just like one. The circle of exclusion grew as their tools felt at home in their hands. They devised tactics to back the fuckers off without so much as a word exchanged. When one man missed another shot down the one that got away, this they repeated for what felt like hours, honestly far less. They thought no more about why these guns existed, only that life would have ended in their absence.

Morie thought of the last time he woke up and thought of her hair's flow, her kiss... And would sleep again after taking care of what engorged. A young man's fancy but alongside it, how much he yearned to be hers, beyond the simpler urge. For forever.

Todd recalled how much that Tutti-Frutti yogurt hit the spot, one that Lemmy had turned him onto; the shop stood in a wing of town that from up here looked impeccably spared. There may be refreshments in the future after all.

Bret thought only of the wind on his jeans, over four wheels coasting down steady hills in the Garland district. Even magic couldn't kill topography. If he had to make a new board himself, and go out alone when all of this was done... He'd do it for the soldier-princes.

Shell after beam after fireball reached the evil hoardes in loud report. Two of the boys wished for a Hi-Score screen and thanked gods that there was no slot to put in quarters. The other knew a burning in his throat, a place where tears stopped when it was wrong to show them at the juncture... He wondered if his father's forebears ever saw a thing like this, or just shot down their versions of obstacles. Titles rarely come to be without loss.

No matter the impact on them, they must go on with commitment. For as they inhabited their own skin they fought for so much more.

Wendy in Morie's mind, Lemmy in the skater pals', all the voices they could hear out the portholes from ten floors down; it all came down to them as they saw it. But the fact they shan't persist all night was just that... No one could say who'd save them when the energy faltered, or one too many mistakes may happen.

Three men who ordinarily shirked prayer all tried their hands at it, inwardly, before a third line of Toadies broke over the city.

None had any insight of where the princess be: mired in woods, marching with the big guns of olde, hell-bent on mailing Kamek to a place south and fitting.

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Larry stumbled over lumped sand and pieces of dead rock-automaton, eyes blurred with tears. He avoided streaks of ice, bolts of blue lightning. He dodged death in continuance. But it went easier now; Kamek's attacks seemed to fire off at half-speed, and in less throes of emotioned power. This was worse than any doom that could meet Larry... Aside from allotting him time to think, and grieve on his feet, it meant he was a fraction of former threats to the sorcerer. One prince instead of two. Larry traced no common shape, making oblong trails that kept Kamek's spells at a distance. The sorcery was now not unlike a set of Bond-villain traps; destined to wear down the subject, until either begging vainly or demoralized to where death was welcome and yet slow as glaciers. Less of Kamek's bag-o'-tricks came into use. It was painstaking in harshest terms.

The warlock snapped his fingers and sent off a triple-strike of needles, tipped with a venom unnamed. One flew past Larry's back, one over his sandy bloody hairdo, one less than an inch from his nose. He weeped openly now. There nothing to say, no redemption could be done for where he'd found himself. It wouldn't take fate in reverse, for certain, what's gone was gone. The darkest one laughed, but like a couch potato who found the only good joke in Friends. Bored and languid. He didn't even deign to insult his young target. "It seems you run slower as a solo act, also. I would not have thought his being had such motive to you." Behind glasses he rolled his eyes; he then joined up all his digits, the double-fist shined as if a lighthouse, and rays like beacons shot out of the cracks where his fingers failed to align. One shined upon Larry's head, at a point where a cut parted his blue strands; he felt sedate, and not woozy nor plagued by pain. All at once a remarkable calm fell, and in his heart was a peace unfettered.

Thoughts were unaffected; for five full seconds he could think of Lemmy as his father had ruminated, downstairs, over Morton's wounded self; only there would never again be new memories with the boarder. He had blocked out this fact while he anguished inside, but now was the time it really hit him; and something else did, on the curve of his brow, a sharp blade that boomeranged out from the man in robes. Molybdenum alloy, Kamek shaped it like a cutter. This further confirmed he could make anything, be, do, have any piece of reality. To own or use. The wound robbed Larry of sight; though impossible to tell if it would prove permanent, his lights went out as mind-made metal ripped through skull and lodged powdery bone dust in the closest lobe of grey matter. Larry went limp standing up, and the dusty desert valley cushioned his drop.

"Pitiable wretch." Kamek muttered, almost vehemently sad. The cause of why was put through his next words. "More than seldomly, getting there is entertainment. The win holds no surprise ever-after." In truth, as far as the present told him Larry headed for the afterlife, a place whose happenings and journeys showed only to those that embarked.

Kamek put his arms level, touched his unfurled hands at middle fingers' tip; thereby he floated down the side of his rebuilt pyramid. One incantation came forth, and as he spoke it in the accent and echo of ancient lingo, wisps of sand stretched up from the sunken lands, drew forth vapor and whispers from Earth itself. Toadies with brilliant gleam to their skin, youth and the finest facsimuile of a soul, they all turned to face their maker. To their knees they fell, bowing. Showing worship. He cackled, amidst a hundred new followers. Loyal forever, brainless for as long. Five of them surrounded the body of Lemmy, and of Larry, struck down on the sands. The latter twitched in his leg.

Against all odds Larry moved, waking from a magic sleep. He still could not see; unable to know if he was dead or alive, but feeling wind on his chafed nose, the wounds oozing blood down his chin. And perceiving shade, hearing five high-pitched figures that surrounded him. They had failed, he and his late brother. He lingered on but understood.

They said things he could never translate. But though unfamiliar with tongues he heard no empathy, not a thing that would entail it was oncoming. Breathing deep the sweet air, feeling it hit his lungs and tingle his broken body, he accepted this was life's last, and held silent a gratitude that he at least wouldn't have to wince. No working eyes to see what they'll do to him. He even rued the moment, hoped dearly it was fast. Longing for the finish...

"YAH-hoo!!"

Larry heard this, and his head, the heads of Toadies who threatened him, Kamek's, the menagerie who just bowed and flattered the traitor, they ALL looked to the north. At cliff's edge, where unblighted land split off from this plane of Kamek's. At the corner of Bowser's realm. In service of Bowser. Where no mortal man would ever dare to guess he'd be, the man in overalls. Mario smiled and his moustache shed a hair; it incidentally blew by breeze onto a Toadie, one of the newborn crop; once hitting the sap's cheek, it seared and the puppet-soldier screamed. In two-and-a-third seconds it turned all flesh on him red, then orange, and finally faded him to bleak grey, where the ashes of a dead Toadie disintegrated and were back to the dust that forged it.

Kamek's shoulders stooped, and the rest along with them. Wordless as the plumber looked once at him, took a flying leap with a fist high, and hit the sandswept valley floor.

No shockwave was needed to quake the sorceror and his legion, tripping them. Space itself warped in ripples so the grit below quite literally moved. Some started falling through the destabilized ground, only to find it rise again... Except, no, it didn't rise, they simply saw themselves phase through the top layer. Horror and shrieks hurt Kamek's ears, as some came to obey the laws of physics and were shredded to ribbons; they could not coexist with the molecules of sand. Earth won the tug-o'-war with atomic being, and their fluids stained to a sandy crimson. Mario simply wiped his 'stache.

One Toadie, brave or under Kamek's spell, rushed the Italian. He got spit in his face for the trouble; the loogie launched him like a cannonball and a fake tree stopped him dead. Bones inside of him were like piles of sugar, and the tongue popped out so hard it flung free of the tissue connecting it. One eye popped out and hung on by the optic nerve. Mario sighed, unhappy with killing, but savvy all the same that it announced his godlike state. Light would reach within two feet of him and slow to a crawl; he looked out-of-focus to even Kamek, a foe with vision unmarred and dark magicks on his side; if light could not escape the plumber's clutch now, nothing would. A fucking event horizon.

"... You..." Kamek simmered while saying, "... Have no business here." Though he felt this turn of fate should be a mistake, there weren't many things that would send the human warrior out to here. What would happen to steer Mario to the bowels of this New Kingdom? This, he set to finding out. From his pocket he yanked swiftly the wand; it was in a hand that squeezed tight, Kamek's frail yellow grip. Frightened that one wink from Mario would send it away or crush it with so much as a thought. This... Changed old enemy of Bowser's, he bode that the spellmesiter found an equal. Kamek shook but his speaking carried steady, hearty. "I admit though, a part of me wished vainly to see this. I may damn the lizard and his loyals, but the messes you made were felt. More than once I was charged with cleanup, or reordering the scattered men into koopa guards 'worthy' of you again... What... What are you doing!?"

He had wanted to cajole the plumber, but derailed when he saw the man approaching Larry. Blinded royal son, in agonies multiple, faced with dire approach of death. Mario could break his spine with so much as a gust of breath... Kamek thought he might witness such a deed. Then the human's glove reached, and he knelt, beside the crumpled teen in bloodied green duds. Laid a palm on the fellow's shoulder. Closed his eyes, and waited.

It was true. What Mario suggested to himself, never knowing if it was folly, got Larry's eyes to open. All he sensed was a faint silver light, then shapes came into focus. One looked almost like... Black facial hair... But it couldn't be... Impossible. He doubted he had strength to fend the man off. rather than try, he collapsed, waiting to see if the man would strike. No such happening.

... So this was kindness? The prince rubbed his eyes, realized their lids were smooth. Undamaged, which even less added up. He didn't get to look in the plumber's face, though, as that already faced off with the magician; looking to the source of these calamities. Lip stiff. Squinting in the sandy air. Lungs working overtime, huffing in discontent, judgement. "I don't-a care what you think of me. I know some of what you've done. It makes a heart wither." He put fists out in front, defensive, as though he wasn't godly just standing there in new form.

Kamek danced through puzzlement, amusement, to impish glee. "That disappoints me. I know NONE of what destiny's thrown at you to send you by. I reiterate, though..." He wriggled his nose, and from nothing a cloud of black surrounded Mario. It transmogrified, forming a cube, then slats, until the fullness of a metal prison cell boxed Mario in. It looked impervious, solid on all sides but the one which Kamek dictated for. "This is something I'd have wanted if I'd known it was to be. It's pitiable I don't have a gift basket around, for just such an honour!" He launched forward, shook the plumber by latching on the bars and rattling them to taunt from outside. "You're going to tell me why you'd save that wretch. And why a hero like you is courting me, how you even knew I'd have this locale."

Kamek thought for certain he'd have closure for those queries. Mario gathered himself, took one grand draw of air with his diaphragm, and the 'event horizon' doubled. The metal jail cell bowed, made horrible noise as it warped and imploded, bent through the dimensions until atoms shrank to nothing mere inches from Mario. Like they had no space to touch him and just gave up, poofing out. He was free. In the open air, Kamek's teeth gnashed and his fists betrayed his trembling. "That holds no bearing! Refuse me if you want, I'll slay you like a dog with the answers or not! I'm a man who can kill the messenger and then break for tea!!"

Mario chuckled, and wiped sand from his nasal hair. "Not-a one of your best lines, Copperfield."

Kamek lost it. Turning red, he wielded the wand and brought it close to 'charge up'... Purple energy circled him, gaining white and red streaks, then he unleashed the orb of pulverization. It went headlong into the head of Mario, who stuck fast to his position, statuesque.

Smoke cleared in half a minute. There was to be nothing where that pulse of force lashed out... Instead, Mario brushed his overalls. They were clean as could be of course... He liked the old punchlines. Speaking of which, he employed a few, bickered with the old warlock. "Nothing you want is-a my problem."

"Perhaps, but YOU rushing in and toying with me WILL BE!!"

"So you see that-a you can't triumph."

"I don't need to, I just need you to stop!!" He sent of green lines of gamma rays, something that could melt a face or give instant radiation death... Mario leaned out from them. Did the rockaway.

"You old fool. All this for-a nothing." Mario sighed, with honest torment for having to engage the murderer. This was all too civilized, knowing all the civilians, cut down. Kamek had no way to nick this fighter's cheek, let alone lay fatal blows. And Larry was getting up... Larry, the problem child, trickster, Kamek had thought of him younger. Pictures flashed through his twisted mind, 15 years back. He aimed and set off a firebeam for the prince. Incalculable heat, and Mario extended his arm as it approached the koopaling. Two seconds later it was gone, fizzled. Mario took care of it, protected the teenager. Kamek's face went violet. He shrieked to the ground, his version of the heavens. Childishly he threw the wand like a boomerang; Mario jumped, missed coming down on it to wreck it but still lived as the weapon returned to sender.

Kamek's drool steamed, so fiery inside. "YOU have no bloodline of the ancients!! YOU don't commune with the all-powerful who poured into me their strength and their honourable rage!! I DEFY you to tell me from whence your power comes!!!" He nearly toppled, dizzy, hyperventilating, still on his safe triangular crest.

This, Mario would dignify with answer. "The one you seem to want exterminated-a most. He surprises me."

Kamek would never know just what that meant. Saying no more, Mario jumped forward; at 3,400,000 MPH, he hit Kamek's chest and exploded into midair punching, sailing high, high into stratosphere before he could wind up the fifth blow. By the time he finished meleeing the squat bastard, they were in starlight, over continent. Kamek lived, and through that same deific force he turned crimson, threw Mario away by a quick aura, and glowed in the bowels of space as they floated in circle.

Mario sped for him again, just missed by a hair as Kamek sidehovered. The sorcerer plucked a comet from a billion miles distant, and hurled it at far past the speed of sound. Mario bowed his back, and the giant rock was just-as-close eluded. It wound up in the sun a second later, tremendous fireworks lit their backs. Lunging through the emptiness of space. Mario socked a left hook, and sent Kamek out past Jupiter. The sorcerer flew through the gas giant on the trip back; its central hole swallowed itself back to normal as Kamek fired off poison bullets, thousands in streams. Mario flew, swam, pirouetted through the vacuum, unmarred.

He had idle thoughts, beating on the fuckstain of a warlock, not quite landing knockouts. "I don't ask you if-a you think it's worth the lives of innocents, to come out on top. You set aside long ago the scope of price." He swung his leg out and kicked Kamek's thigh as they passed in the void... The spellcaster winced, doubled over, floated free as pain distracted him.

Slowly control came back to him... He leaned up, just in time for Mario to fly straight at his stomach. No one could hear the 'OOF', or any else of this battle, but Kamek's eyes filled with pain's watering. Mario sped through airless distance, and stopped flat, so the sorcerer sailed on at Mach 680 into a Kuiper belt planetoid, lifeless before, only crumbs now. He gasped; through this it dawned on him the magic was finite. Lungs were feeling it at last, and he focused all motion on swinging around, staying far from Mario, rocketing towards Earth and atmosphere. He just managed to reach the edge, where the breathing layer kicked in. As warlock it wouldn't take much to fill him, even an exosphere had oxygen and his bloodshot eyes lay on it as the edge came near...

... He halted, feeling it on his leg. Mario's fist, around his femur. Held away from the planet. Mere feet away from liferenewing air, and the human had him fast and secure. He strained against the grip. Mario didn't let him budge.

"Today, you-a learn why no man's won the kind of kingship you want through genocide." Mario hung on, never letting the leg slip.

It was maybe natural that Kamek did what he then did; strained against his own leg, uttered incantations, and screamed in pain as his leg severed itself. Not clean but gore-filled, it stayed in Mario's hands as the foul one fell to Earth, taking great stark breaths while he did, refreshing all. Mario cursed in Occitan and Sardinian brogue, and dropped the leg into the light outer gravity. He dove through sky to meet Kamek, who stopped him at twenty yards up, sending shockpulses high above, sparing the sand. "Careful," the wizard mocked, "You wouldn't want to hurt a fly which crawls on this land, correct?"

Mario stood on Kamek, in the air above the latter's lair. Above Larry's head, the one who watched, no longer fuzzy or bonesplintered. He opened jaw and bit the fire out of Kamek's nose, violent. Tearing off a hunk. He had finished with playing around. "You like-a shedding flesh weight? Have some more wound." He knew the cruelty served purpose. Bowser's nation hadn't fought with him, it was the troops. Those Kamek once commanded. Those the fiend didn't turn on and kill by themselves. And he dwelled on other notions, clammy. Groping Kamek's throat. Squeezing. "You wanted me dead before you saw-a fit to give it their way. It's not just you who likes-a this pow-wow."

Pressing into Kamek's windpipe, his carotid, his brain stem from behind. Two hands worked to force the life out of the darkest evil. From below, a gunshot, and momentary slippage. Then he found it simpler than ever to choke the wizard... Larry had shot Kamek in the back.

Mario kept focus. He didn't have to know how Larry pulled a spare pistol, how they had been disarmed by cantrip but for that one hidden backup. The holopoint bullet Larry had time to center on a wicked spine; it shredded Kamek's C-5 vertebra. Slivers were now trapped with hot metal in the emperor's ribs. The gurgle in crushed throat was foreboding. And still Mario pressed.

Larry cheered through sobs. Mario fell to the dirt, still locked onto Kamek's neck, no longer up by active magic. Weakened, strangled, Kamek reached.

Mario fought with him less and less. The chokehold went easier, those reaches were troubled, dying. Mario kept wisely back from the pest's face, but told it like it was. "You're gonna die angry. And all I can-a say for your victims, is they go to something better." He spat on Kamek's eye, which still twitched. "Time for hell, heartless."

Close Larry crouched by Lemmy. Low he bent to hold his brother's body, thinking it was close to time he could ask for Mario's divinity. Kamek would die and this would be undone, not just avenged.

... Only neither he nor Mario expected Kamek's back to open up. Sprout green whiplike appendage... It was a vine, growing leaves. Unfurling in the air, souring the breeze, making plumber cough and sputter. Spores leaked from every inch of the tendrils. Kamek's head fell into itself... Grotesquely crumpled, went malformed and then absent, as more vines and wooden flays squirmed into being and pushed out into Mario's face. They wrapped around his hair, his temples. His chin.

Yells from a panicking Larry, who ran up but was kept from approach by whips across the face. He spoke gibberish, thinking what he could do. He had to help. As Mario pulled at vine after vine, and they bound him tighter, more numbered, Larry closed off his senses... Ruminated... Focused on what they hadn't done. And there he found a fix.

He'd only get one chance...

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

*Cr-CRACK-BOOOM!!*

The plaster gave way, the decorative sconce above, some red fitted decals of the castle basement's corridor. No other walkway than the connector for the hospital, and from its new 'wound' tumbled X' and Kurt. And under the latter, Roy, least talkative of the three. This owed itself to his passing out... Inhaling concrete dust and panicking from their cave-in behind had shocked his system. It was either lucky or unlucky that Kurt's foot should roll over his neck as they landed asswise on the carpet inside. Roy awoke with a crick and a temper. Dazed but unconfused, just marginally bruised. After cursing most of creation, he saw Brooke pass on the left, gun still readied but brushing out a stray bang unalarmed. They had all made it... And there seemed no calamity nearby. Just dull thuds, what sounded lke the town itself and the loitering siege by Toadies on the heart and soul of Dark Land. Roy brushed his head, only minimal blood came back on his hand. They all checked one another, nods showed them to be stable as could be. They didn't keep from speaking though, what with much to say about plenty. Kurt put out an opinion. "The place needs an update, maybe a mural or two. I don't mind the stucco though."

Roy swiped at his ankle in-play as the prince among them got up, last to step on the red padding that decked the floors. He saw which way was to the palace, and pushed past X' to the head of the group. They heard the dull booms more and more; but truthfully it was more that they had a bone to pick that brought them through to the ascension point, where this ramp of a hall came up to meet the lower keep's lobby. Brooke observed. "If there's no blood here, that's even better. Call it how you see it, but I think those murmurs are civilian, and fine."

They all thought the same, and their hearts were given time to cool down from the sprint and anxious route to here. Xavier took the side of his thumb, licked and rubbed Kurt's shoulder; at first there was recoil and cringe, but he felt better soon after the insulation and concrete dust left his quills. He didn't bitch out the shorter dude, and Roy could hear the commotion coming nearer and nearer... At least until X' complained. "This is weird. You'd think at least some statues would be knocked over or something, my colon flips every time that boom goes on up there."

"There's lead poured into their footings," Roy answered, remembering when one was fixed while he watched as a boy, and the fascinating process. "Plus, whatever's clappin' hardy, it's not here it's hitting."

"Got it." He went back to stern soon enough; a life of trials made each pal of Roy's incessantly ready to go serious, it kept them out of trouble in all flavours and kinds. He heard what Roy had first, and now the audio of goombas, koopa denizens, was a welcome one. Multiplying.

The mob didn't scream, a few however bickered. The bully -prince caught a faint "I'll investigate, you stay here! I mean that!" when he cupped his ear. The tone could not be more familiar. He fastwalked now, then jogged, up the rise, hearing pants and the noise of aquarium-size lungs. Roy grinned, and it only lasted through the next *thud*, which also got louder now that space encroached on the way to Floor 1.

Out from the secret path they'd emerged like miners; now Roy got closer to the sound of his dad, one sweeter now both to his ears and in honest pitch, a lack of sour like seldom-ever. Roy saw the horns first, clear exactly when the view also broke over the stone of the great hall, the first room past the gate and moat, the place where hundreds of heads either talked or looked on toward where their king had volunteered to check. The man and his son approached, captured each other in a hug and squeezed ruefully. Warmly. Each one tough, both in the mindset of glad love.

Bowser put a hard pat or three on Roy's neck, and the son said all that needed to be. "I netted a platoon here, we're gonna come and cover. Though it looks like you've kept it from bein' a need."

Bowser's intimidating mouth cut a chuckle. father went back up to the grouping of survivors and servants, elbow-room to spare in the tiled masterpiece of welcome spaces. It was stately, it was cozy... It was home, and one of few that survived. even if they all knew Kamek spared them for some untold reason. Though every man or woman old enough to season the Earth with offspring knew they would all be sitting ducks and just prolonged the inevitable.

Roy saw children manipulating toys, adults locked in banter unharried though loaded. Everyone had ways to cope, and the place hummed with activity. The threat they thought Roy's noise had posed would evaporate on sighting him, one by one. A few caught the looks of some low-income drifters, the three partners-in-crime of his, and turned up their nose. Brooke stared right back, but made peace with the offense. All too used to it, on that side of town.

Stepping up to ground-level the mercenary woman mingled with Kurt and answered a question from a teen girl with shocked eyes. It became the best they could hope for, and she lost some anxious palpitating when she could allay the fears. X' even told a joke that got Roy cracked up, too low to know outside of the prince's ear. Bowser set back in to a white ottoman he used as a seat, and the cook and elite guard who had been listening to him quit talking to each other as they'd started to, and resumed being audience.

"You see, I have options in arrears. Didn't even know we'd have those party guests." The joke came droll and got the guard to laughing. Bowser added more. "So back on topic, I was standing there at the lip of the klown kar, making certain she'd not miss me on the way to the sitting room. My tux had a hole in two sides, remember, I was hasty. But as she came through and saw what her Friday night put before her... The horn holes were never mentioned." He breathed greedily, like more air would make the memory sharper. His elbow rest on one knee but his other arm gesticulated, rueing to himself how time only separated more and more. "I can't recall the movie we saw. Nor the weather, only what colour she cut in that figure-shaped dress. Every nuance told me what she felt, how comfy, if she wanted me closer. I call myself old-fashioned, but there really is something to the subtle cues."

"Wow." The hammer bro opposite his kneecaps was honestly compelled, drawn in. Little else was worthy of concern, the prince and company were making nice with refugees.

"Had I known how many blessings would eventually spring forth... I'd have invested more for nursery planners." Bowser spoke nostalgic. It was impossible not to be. He slapped his thigh and looked over quick, as Roy headed off questions from a young Lakitu woman. There was a snicker, but with humble eyes... He wouldn't stare straight on as she laughed and acted charmed. The king saw this as it was, entirely new. He owned placid features and a peace within, recounting. "These grounds kept them safe, well-onto two full decades. I suppose few things linger as past regrets. But, I had no way to parse that out when I owned less wrinkles. It seemed every month was a new joy and three new migraines."

"Totally. My first boy, we had to throw out two couches 'cuz he had the worst spitups since those acid dinos in Jurassic Park."

"Ecchh... My condolences. Iggy was our problem in that area, he reacted to carrots li-"

Another bang from upstairs, and now the armed hooligans that had come with Roy cowered with a pallor. They didn't know the sky lit up with ammo from skater-pals; nor by-proxy that the fight was growing dire. Kamek miles and miles away fumed inside beyond the dealings with his own skirmish: losing patience with the volleys Todd and Bret and Morie put off. Remotely he sent in hoarde after hoarde. Stormed the windows and parapets where soldiers who had had enough finally got to the tops of long stairwells, filling lookouts and archer's stations on the turrets. It was heating to a frustrating degree, though the mindless Toadies were still picked off without casualty for now... Bowser spoke on, ignoring the sweat and anguish in the hammer brbo's face as explosions got louder, the lights flickered. The monarch would not be stopped or silenced, telling tales of life throughout the booms, the ordeal, children yelling now beyond abilities to calm them, hugs being doled out that stayed there, faces pressed in. Roy and his group found themselves grouping - perhaps by instinct - near Bowser. The battering noises were no longer outside, one hit the gate... Giant, tall wooden stately door that so happened to seal this room off from the moat and outside.

Bowser wrapped an arm around Roy as the teen got close. Vocal tone was low. "Bear with me, I'm learning how to do this better... If this be our end, son, you should know, I always knew you'd find your way."

Roy first chuckled, then put it silent before the tears could start. He pretended to check his gun whilst wiping his nose, and had a retort handy like any year before. "We can muse about stuff later, when we're alive and all these fuckers aren't."

His King Dad chucked his head, soft though with so huge of a hand. The pounding on the gate repeated, harder now. Every statue shook though mounted down, all paitings were either fell or falling. No one sat by themselves in this chamber of holdouts. Outside the robed legions bunched in, assaulted the wood tallr than ten of them with rocks, Bob-ombs, spells that ignited or melted. Sections of the gate came down, one by one. Screams from inside were rising in terror, each one a sitting duck.

Toadies in two-tone robes, wielders of double wands, made up the front of the siege. They broke pieces out from the wood; soon the whole construction of the gate collapsed, and pieces large as enemies themsleves toppled harmlessly off heads in robes to bounce into the moat, next to the flow of foes in by way of wading up. Wet assassains. Precision killers that had breached the very very last line of defense, and the king and subjects lay inside right there...

... And then the shooting started. Brooke's XK-237 unloaded on the stream of twisted enemies. Roy had pried a hatch off the barrel Bowser sat on, a secret compartment they two alone had know of... In his hands a submachine gun looked strange yet natural for the stout build of his. A clip of rounds unloaded on the fuckers further back in the marching lines. His spray added a good punch to the spree Brooke was on, grisly but life-saving for everyone inside. Unarmed families were pressed into the far part of the halls, and Kurt snatched the only Toadie to make it past two gun targets by leaping and pulling him out of the sky. The wimpy thing showed no fear, remorse nor pain as he squeezed with his foot around the villainpawn's chest. Taloned feet sliced through the thing's organs like scissors, but there lay no joy in killing it, it couldn't even know to be in horror. The empty 'life' died a meaningless death and Kurt howled with rage from impotence, while Roy and Brooke cut through the tens and hundreds of invaders... Bowser sat regal, attentive, neither shrinking nor fighting. On his guard - should another straggler break through and he could flame the poor bastard to a burning death - but elsewise, perched with splendour and a king's dignity, ready to rule on or be dethroned by death, whichever happen.

Roy pulled out an empty clip, reached under the tail that's highest in the land, and into the barrel went a fresh pack of rounds. Bowser did another deed now, flexing his tail into the barrel underneath, wrapping around a pile of bullet magazines, pushing them out for better access. Unsuicidal. Accepting. The bodies of Toadies piled up, more had to climb over now, extra time was taken and more loss incurred. No denizen inside here lay harmed. Some kids were even spellbound, watching the action like a personal stage play while parents huddled too close and protective to care.

Toadies who thought in the most basic sense that they'd walk over dead allies and prevail, were always next to die. Roy and Brooke peppered their faces, ripped through them like paper in a fan. Bowser beamed despite his honourable poise, and below the gunfire started in with mantras, praising his bully boy's mettle, his worth. Very aged hymns, classical songs twisted to reflect the name and courage of his boy this day. Roy denied his tears as they streaked down and he lit the room with muzzlefire. His father's voice was coppery. Beautiful, channeling a wearied soul. Whittled by his era down to rolling alto streams of melody. Brooke fought even harder to acknowledge she cried, but the force of the gun in her hand, the cherry-bombs of blood splattering walls and stone architecture, it all felt spiritual. Some by experience.

The gaping hole of wrecked gate would soon be piled too high with bodies to threaten, at least until they started picking up the casualties. Taller Toadies grabbed up by the necks or arms and tossed the ex-soldiers in to watery grave. Toadies who marched to be next to try and murder had to swim over layers of dead. Still they failed to break through, too much firepower. Troopas with arrows, fireballs, boomerangs, all filled in the slightest crack in the teenagers' defense. As it looked more like assault, Bowser sang war cries, chants he learned in youth.

Kamek stumbled, halfway across the world. Rage intensified as it hurt deeper to know the Dark Kingdom servants lived on, no slaying taken place but of his own walking extensions. They weren't precious, yet... His anger fueled calamitous orbs of plasma, heading for a plumber. The castle had protectors now, more than one hand may count. Nothing went according to plan.

Determination to extinguish them. Only this filled the sickly heart of the Sorcerer.

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

Iggy scratched at his leg, following and faltering as Wendy picked up the pace. Chiggers and grass fleas were camped out on his skin below the knees, more with every few steps through this underbrush. He said not a word, however, the lack of comfort had began to be familiar. They walked with half-limps, towing so many guns from the old hideaway their hips hurt from the barrels slapping on with step after step. She sighed, not big on the blazing heat which doubled as they left the cover of forest. Woods petered out into vast plains which licked into the path to Kamek's hold. Wendy knew less leaves meant more vantage for all that could be seen around them, but also that they made up sitting ducks. "Wow..." She droopily exclaimed, not energetic, sharing that in common with Iggy. "Empty is pretty." It was half a joke.

Her dorkier bro made it a full one. "Or just pretty empty. If there's a watering hole past here, it'll taste like animal saliva. OOF-" He bitched as one of the guns slid down from his arm, where more of its length swayed and beat his pelvis to a bruised pulp. Still he showed dignity by failing to curse, accuse or tell her off; he'd raised himself right, in any event.

She smacked her stained lips, understanding of his troubles. "Believe me, I'm not looking forward to that. But if it's all there is, we won't have time to vom' about it." She hid her pain well; not one to spend time at the gym, she forgot how a body drags with its weight tripled by metal. But if she did it as a little girl, she could do it now. Her shoes hold up well, Iggy's equally, so they had that going for them. Favoured by a breeze also, sweat became vapour and they had these minimal reprieves. "I'm thinking if that's Fremont's Gulch we just passed... Account for the armloads we have, the wind's direction, we'll be there in two miles. That's terrifically less than we've done." Her encouragement helped, and the four-syllable word was spoke with two meanings: greatly and blessedly. The two shared pain but for a brief time further.

Iggy went cheeky. "Sure, did you solve for X too?" He coughed; a bug flew into his mouth. Wendy had her own dignity whereupon she forced herself not to laugh at it.

"I worked out how to get us there without tracing past towns or other targets. Call that 'X' if it makes you happier."

"... Ugghhh, certainly." He rolled his eyes so hard it registered on the Richter scale. Something else that might trip such a device: The infernal racket of May beetles, buzzing over marigolds and wild carrot blooms, save for the one that lodged in Iggy's throat before his life's most disgusting swallow. He could breathe, he just tasted enough to wish he didn't. His next words rasped as the wings had marred his vocals. "I don't intend thanklessness. Had my trust faltered, you'd be alone at present."

"Oh I figured." She didn't say it dismissive. She squinted and jerked once as a clumsy beetle clocked her on the nose, but no marks or scratches and she carried on. "Know what else you can trust, Ig's?"

He tried to be gung-ho. "Lay it on me, cousin. Sister."

"What we have is sight-unseen for decades. Those pieces you lug more of than me? They're the centerpieces. Some were lost to history, collectors... Wrote off as gone artifacts. Daddy knew how to search out my birthday gifts." She looked down, her smile wistful. A terror pricked her heart, and she knew how much this had to succeed, for him and all.

Iggy, though, broke her out of this with his own worry. "So we know they fire, right? After years of obsolescence, no maintenance, no climate control in storage. They had better perform."

"Iggy..." She complained right back in tone, but realized he wasn't invalid. "... You're right. They'd dang-well better, or every goose is cooked from here to the borders. And THEN some, if I'm right about how dictators don't stop just from courtesy."

Iggy's shoulders stayed high while his spirit fell. "Marvellous. Our plight is a swell one."

Out of Wendy came a sound, beleaguered, powerless. What will be will be, and they made haste to the only chance they'd have. The miles left were 1.5. Clouds broke over the huge sky, white and grey together. If it showered on them they'd feel relief, but with weapons ruined. It was put up with hot-and-heavy or all was for naught. Wendy's shoe rolled under her, but she recovered from a stumble, no fall. Iggy had figured out to slam down his feet; no chance of tripping, and his soles already screamed at him, it would barely hurt them worse. Gentle hills and undulations in ground were all to break the monotony, but they had both nobles' eyes wide with wonder. Nothing else was like the outer rim of Grass Land. In a way Wendy would be sorry to see it go when they reached the targeted place; half for losing the liberty to take in beauty, the rest for the wickedness of what must be done.

Iggy surprised her, pulling her from landscape-stupor. "Sis? I wanted to pose a question, since we're where we are presently, and... We'll soon be diverted."

"... Oh, um, alright." She was already in distraction's lap. But she would always be there for him.

He lied to some extent; it would be more than one question by itself. His lungs filled, and the earlier gulp no longer had effects. "If Mom could see us now, what might she say?"

She froze. Only a moment, and for just one half-step where her foot floated in midair. She returned to the pace, and looked straight ahead, watchful of their course through the mist at her eyelids. "From what I remember... She'd be furious. Us out here, shirking the military, no soldier guards... She'd have a fit like I've never had." She laughed lightly. "It's what mothers do."

"True, and astute." He found odd comfort.

Wendy continued. "I know she'd understand though. If we got to explain every little detail, or, like you said, if she was already there with Dad and watched everything happen..." Her throat felt worse than Iggy's when he'd snatched a protein snack from the air.

The brother with her now, walked closer. He 'd have laid an affectionate hand on her shoulder, if both weren't encumbered by gunstocks. "She would have intuited many things. Right down to what compelled us." He thought deeply, and what struck him next had him simply blurt out regardless of proper time. "She was Dad's closest from the very beginning. Head and shoulders above all others."

Wendy flexed in her core once, the wave from a sob he didn't see. She expertly talked disguising it. "And when they knew that as one, all the rest ceased to matter. I wish he didn't still keep a concubine or two... But, men have their own demons and their ways with them." She understood beyond her years. This, and Iggy's thirst for knowledge... They mutually knew sans-speaking it, who likely gave such inheritance.

Iggy nodded with dry mouth and bunions forming. "Do you think... He would wield them if she hadn't left this world?"

She grunted. "I think he would 'wield' some common sense, so that's a hell-no. Can we change the subject now?"

"Oh... Throroughly." The last thing he wanted was being irksome to her. They stepped down from a 'lip' where the land furrowed like a wrinkle... Neither noticed it wasn't featured in geography books from tutoring. "Wendy I'm unsure how to project this, so I'll give my best attempt. Do you see more of her in us, or him?"

"Is everything ok, Ig'?" She wasn't irritated now, but truly curious. "The answer's not easy. I'd need a lot more time and focus than either of us have."

He nodded again; this time it led into a headbang, as a string of hair had laid down in his sightline. He un-sweatglued it. "Right, our latitude is not to puzzle over this. I... I apologize."

She tilted at the neck, compassionate. "Not needed. You're feeling natural things, for the eleventh hour." Wendy knew that wording it that way would speak to him.

After a pause - and a bevy of emotions to process - he came back with one last ask. "Would it hurt if I said he's the only black mark on Dad's slate? Since... It means we had both guardians high-minded and with skilled hearts."

"... I... Guess I'd have to agree." She thought over a tinted spate of memories, walking in on them once. It seemed 'amiable', as if both had wanted it, but the insanity was too much; a younger her had stormed out, and pretended she didn't just see her father in his arms. But an older present-day her knew such things are not dependent on logic. No great guiding force of reason dictates what we want... And from Morie's hairstyle the first few dates they'd had, this would be a concrete rule.

But, changing the topic was positively natural. She asked Iggy one thing of her own. "What kind of face do you expect on Kamek, once he sees us party crashers?"

"Hah! I anticipate reeling. Of the first degree, and in fury's thin veneer." He acted out anger with teeth-gnashing, diminutive like it might be from the short little bastard. "Ultra thin, since there's less to the megalomaniac than meets the eye."

Wendy cackled; for Iggy to call a man shallow was true insult. "You could crack it with a spoon, a'la cicada skins."

She and Iggy both cringed at the imagery, empty nymph carcasses. But the guy had been right as rain, inferring that Kamek's anger would come dramatised. Much more to the point was fear, the kind they both foresaw he'd feel when this old-time collection of killer's toys engaged him. Gun after gun, no contemporaries, plenty of bullets. More than Lemmy or Larry'd carted out there, combined. Wendy rued the notion so much her tongue licked at her lip gloss... Some kind of battle or spy-v.-sorcerer skirmish is going on, and in comes her and Iggy, toting what K' shan't have prepared for... No conceivable way, if the squirt isn't psychic. And chance of that was low. All this meant that THREE hot-lead-blasters would be teamed up with the Jumpman; a true 4 to 1 fracas. She looked up to a lone white cloud, optimistic, sure that they'd lay waste to the dastardly force he wielded...

... The cloud, however, shaped itself as breeze sculpted it. At once it began resembling a fire hydrant, the broken one, which was at the peak of Deerfield's high street grid. Or... Used to be.

Wendy moved a flyaway bang and spoke to Iggy with morose airs. "I can't tell you how happy I'll be when we avenge the city. I mean, as much as I could be... For all that's not coming back..."

"Oh, sis..." Ig's empathy was rapid. "The value lies not in rubble or the decimated. Memories are what he couldn't rob. And they themselves live on in the Great Beyond."

"They shouldn't have to." She stopped herself from a snippier turn; none of this was his fault. Only one man stood to blame. She sighed, and it wavered as she pushed back tears.

She didn't do so alone; the scientist responded through a throat with a lump. "No one should have. This glut of events just... Avalanched. No one thought any part would happen."

"Iggy... I don't want to think about what nobody saw coming. I'd rather think of the loss and the extinguished ones." She had fixation now; it all dawned on her and Iggy alike, the horrors. Their numbness was eroding.

Even so, he tried to steer their minds. "If you do, all that's left is the emptiness. I understand. The scope is inexplicable. But as this mortal plane divides us from them, so too will our focus. We have to." His first tear fell to a reed they walked past, and ran down the stalk, feeding ever-so-slightly a flower.

He wasn't used to being strong, and she was likewise new to seeing this. But how she respected and appreciated that was unending. "Iggy I don't know where I'd be without my brothers. You, Larry, Lemmy, Morton, all of you. But I do know how much less full my life would be, if it was only me." She slowed down, allowing him to walk closer. They bumped heads softly, going on, still chasing the horizon and their goal. She talked with more determined strength; he supplied this, though it was within her already. Such were the bonds of a real family. And though this put her heart to smoother pace, she spoke still under the shadow of grief. "All the neighbourhoods never to be salvaged. Every one of them filled with people. Our people."

"Such is the cost of holy wars." Iggy reminded. "History's distended with the weight of that. All eras had theirs." He wrapped a tired arm over her; they went on as each other's strength and stay.

Wendy felt somewhat alleved, but what she spoke came not from thought; instead, a soul's inner workings. "Know what I'll miss most? Driving those avenues. Watching pets on leashes lead their caretakers. The smell of passing the bakery. Sundays where everyone mingles. Shop owners waving at us." She started to choke up again, and so ceased talking. Iggy hugged her one-armedly as tight as his thin frame ever could.

He felt now that sharing her pain was the only way. "Or the street performers. Jugglers and guitar players in showcase. Plying their talents, and the claps and shouts from they whose day was made that much brighter. That always got me out of the basement when you offered a slow ride." He tried to laugh. "The convertible was motivation all its own. My hair might have blown around in a tempest, but so did yours."

She managed a smile through wet facial trails. "We'd come home looking like Woodstock and Altamont both fell on us. And we were happy as pigs in crap."

"Without exception." Iggy nodded while speaking.

Nothing more came out their mouths; it was heavy on them how the past was past. All the good of remembering was squeezed out, if they'd voiced more of it, they'd just crumble again. But the images, burned in by glad times, had just enough room to bear fruit. None of those people were meaningless, and neither would they be forgotten. Early life's milestones sprang from them for seven heartful nobles. The clump of homelanders who added crisp dimension to day after day... No more. But never to fade away.

Two more minutes, and the land changed. The valley bent deeper. Prairie grass went shorter, stubbier, until a burnt amber hue showed them dry and dying. And in the distance... Winds blew towards them, from a draft that would appear to have chased a low point. Iggy put his arm out in front of Wendy and they stopped. "I... Don't know if this feels familiar. From my knowledge of geography, this had always just gone on for miles until hitting the Donut Land Mountains." He and her shared eye contact plus a mix of hopefulness, duty and fright. "The plants should not have shifted type, either..."

"Iggy..." She couldn't force out another word. His arm was pushed away as she jogged, sprinted, toward the huge sky at 12 o' clock. Bigger than most blue panoramas should feel. And she was right on her instincts, as the 'edge' became dubious, then certain, and the lip of the cliffs revealed before them. Tens of feet down, into a deeper lowland...

Iggy caught up with her, as she halted twenty-five feet out... The winds were warming, but that wasn't why she'd frozen. Though standing still - and observing down into the dropoff - her mouth shot off a loud exclamation. "What's THIS bullshit!?"

Behind her, Iggy blinked, and cleaned out his ears. He was sure he didn't just hear her curse. Yet, as he ran up behind her, and crouched down in case it somehow helped them hide... It was plain as day what she saw down there.

Ig's mouth leaked the word "Gadzooks", doing little more than letting it escape him.

Two soldier's fatigue uniforms. One blue robe. One set of shining, immaculate overalls, around a man who glowed. One set of fatigues was not moving.

Terror and grief set in, blending with shock.

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

Morton slowly dawned back into the realm, and the hospital bed he'd been confined to. He at once knew horrible pain, but cared less than that would indicate; the IV in his arm dripped Fentanyl. Drugged-up and too weak to speak, he moved his head slowly, incapable to do faster; the bleary 20/200 vision he owned for now focused like hell, and he could make out the machines behind his neck. Cushioning creaked below him at his legs as he slid them up and down; he detested the sear of fried nerves in both of them. He wouldn't move those again, not on purpose; he'd at least confirmed they still worked. He coughed, and it instantly strained his throat... No way could he halt the gasping on his own, and he seemed unaccompanied by nurse nor soldiers. Sweat beaded on his birthmark's star shape... Terror gripped him, knowing all too well that if he couldn't stop gagging, he'd strangle.

Puffs of air leaving lungs also brought him to suffer; they felt like he'd inhaled fiberglass. Mustering super-strength, he poured all his taxed body had left into lifting his burned arm, and heard a -POP- while doing so; he couldn't scream, but the skin graft had unfastened on that elbow. He had to move it, though, and dropped it over his throat to clamp down on it. Seconds later, his coughing was stopped; the tickle in his voicebox tortured him, but it was far better than herniating his chest or dying of a stroke while asphyxiating. His breath calmed back to belabored and a wheeze. His back burned every time a slight motion moved the bedding at his lats. Not one part of him was unbroken or unscorched, and yet, some were starting to heal. That would be the itch he felt... Colossal, all over his thighs, where the car fire had done the least.

He prayed to human and koopa gods alike, deliver him from this peril. Or at least bring someone who'd find out he's awake.

The room remained dark. Though in fragile state, his mind ran miles, helped along by painkiller cocktails pumped straight in. Images came to him, not the ones he wished to dwell on nor even remember. Shattered glass, the buckling of metal as upholstery flew from it, disengaged in utter force. The slo-mo recap killed any pleasure of retaining life that the pain itself didn't already take; finding himself a survivor bade him shake at his very core, something that only hurt more in the literal. Then the image of another passed, the fleeting glimpse he'd caught of the one whose face met the dashboard.

"T-Tom!!"

No matter that every breath was insufferable, he projected as if megaphoned. Machines on the wall rustled, but those which might have fallen had done so when the king graced the room. Morton thought only of his love now... Not present here, nowhere near where he might hear a confirmation the man still held life. At a loss for the only thing which might pacify the brutal time of now. He recoiled from light coming on, a halogen bulb which he wished would burst and fall on him, slicing his throat, whereupon peace might arrive for him. Instead, a nurse came in... And he played unconscious.

She checked his vitals, mumbled under her breath about the state of things in here and what Bowser had wreacked. Not one move was spotted from Morton, the bedridden pining prince, and as she confirmed he lay stable, out the door she went. Unattentive and newbie-ish. Morton couldn't spite her for it, when the whole time he wished never to let her know he knew.

She left a man whose brokenness defied constraints. His throat gurgled, failing to put out another call for Tom. They weren't together and his heart would not will it into being. More pictures of before - benign, screenshotlike - wound through his mind, but of kinder times. Youth, getting up to mischief in school, skipping it to try Marlboros with Larry at the age of twelve. The fateful day he met a strapping man in construction, their first conversation... First date, his first kiss... He wept without tears, the ducts just wouldn't produce any. Life before, and its independence, all those latitudes and notions took for granted. But over these stills that cycled through him, a faint sound invaded recollections.

No memory was strung to match these noises. They were from a man he knew, surely, it was too faniliar. But nothing visual occurred to his brain, not with eyes closed, not at all with them open. It took so long to make sense of it, everything worked against him; the coma he'd come out of, the prescribed dose of opiate, tears and lacerations that kept a body in panic mode. And even so, after minutes on end, the drowsy seconds pulled it out of him, bit by bit. The understanding.

His dad's voice. From somewhere beyond while he'd been so far from awake. And yet, close as a step away. So often cold, stoic, moded by duties or vendettas, this... Parent of his had shown soft ways just a handful of times over Morton's life. The message came together, someway, somehow, even when half the words or more were lost to him. One of Mort's favourite movies had asserted: talk to someone when they sleep, and they'll listen without knowing it. He had been there while Bowser poured out his heart. The ultrapowered Fentanyl did odd work, but godsent; it strung together morsels of compassion. Those glimpses of the love hidden deep, down inside the soul of Bowser.

Morton's heart swelled. It was no lovely epiphany... Hurts continued, with questions of why, why did it take this. Some horrid event like this one. Though he may never know... It was enough that it happened. And the bitterness caked upon his inner id loosened, crumbling away.

He opened his eyes once more, just one final time to try and see. The difference was night and day from when first he'd roused. Details in the ceiling were still sketchy, but shapes and brightness were sharp. He saw through bloodshot windows the life-support machines, strewn about... Most of them he didn't need anymore. More importantly to him, only a strong, hellish force could have done that to such apparati. And if Bowser's grief had filled his ears, crossed with this outcome... Rage was for the powerless feel of what the king had seen, over a son whose life had for so long been less than nothing to him.

Piecing out what happened, he felt profoundly, the happy AND sad. It was valid either way; he had worth in his father's eyes. Safety. He never needed much more.

His charred ears picked up words and panicks outside his room; they, too, required time for his faculties to connect with what they took in. Precious-few things made it through the reinforced door. "Check on", and "Where's the" and "Beverly", latter being the name of a PA on duty. And the word "Ludwig", the only one he heard more than once. It was elementary to connect the dots and realize the throne's heir was a patient here. Morton coughed once more, but it didn't turn into a fitful problem as prior... It only spewed a quantity of red, blood that had seeped out his lungs' alveoli, traumatized and soft as they should never be. He couldn't hope to lift his head, so he trusted they could take care of Ludwig, and that he wasn't lost, or hurt further, by the light panic heard out there. It was strange to consider he could care about the throne, but rather than that, he had brotherly love for the next-in-line. And for all of them, once he could be unbroken and see them all again...

Beyond, a tingle in his gut beguiled him. Memories still leapt and danced through the curtains of his drowsy mind, and all its struggles to make sense of everything in-tandem. One such picture was the one in that car... The ride that lay totalled, not cleaned up off the highway, as those who were dispatched to do so had met the gaze of a flying Toadie... Some ofthe first victims of the city's siege before it even got going. The man in the car that caused all this. A fat and fatuous plumber with no chill, and too many kills on his slate of battles.

It was Mario's fault. Morton lay shattered, Tom lay somewhere else at indeterminate state, for no one else's hubris than the human filth's.

Morton knew the price and risks of revenge. Still he wheezed a pained pitch as he gnashed teeth, some chipped, some destroyed by the crash down to their basal nerves. The pinkskinned pissant would pay for what befell Tom and he.

For now his heart did jumping-jacks, arrythmic. Happiness he'd been touched by a father's love, after years walled off. Sad for Ludwig's dubious emergency here. Despondent for his tall, handsome partner and where/how that gentle man might be. Red with vengeance dreams for the one in overalls, the lone cause for this bed and these IVs.

No one feeling could dominate. Thus they struggled for the top seat inside of him, fueling his frustration, his immobile torments.

"... M-Mario is... The walking dead... When... I'm up from here-... rrrRRGHh-hh..." His gurgles taught the agony of speaking.

Rededication was all that made sense now. The push to get better, so he could stand on his own two feet. Find Bowser, hug the strength and the pious dignity. Reconcile in good faith, and weep over lost days.

And once well, empowered to seek out the human garbage. Mario, his fate's monkey wrench. Enemy. Slaughterer.

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

"See to it that the wheels are galvanized."

"Yes ma'am."

"Thank you. I know you can be counted on. And bring my purple day bag, the one with the compact and the root elixir."

"Immediately, ma'am. Sure."

"Awww you, there's no need to be prickly! My distaste is going elsewhere. Yours does too."

"I... Am merely fearful, your highness. I suppose that's on all of us. I want none of our heads chopped, and... And..."

"Shhh, shh-sh. Nothing of the kind will come here. I'm swearing it."

"... I'm not worthy, my princess... Thank you for caring to help us."

"Teehee~. I'm only as good as my actions. And there are personal reasons... Heaven and Earth, there's personal reasons."

"I've took the liberty of assembling a snack bag for Your Majesty... Salmon cutlets, some braized venison... Star fruit cubes, and a light lemon sorbet for if the heat gets to you, or when you.... When, uh, you-"

"-It's fine, you can say it, lad. When I want to spoil myself. Hehe..."

"Princess. I... Well I wish... I mean I.............. Please manoever safe. And return to us with stories."

"It will be my mission. And I thank you, courtier."

"W-w-one last thing, your highness?"

"Certainly."

"How do you suppose he'll take seeing most of our armies and gunners, showing up for a house call?"

"Ha! Ha!... I think he knew exactly what he invited the second his hand touched a pen. So he might smile, seeing he's right."

"........"

"... Temporarily."

"A-ahh, hahah! You had me, eh, going for a minute there..."

"... Oh! There's one last thing for you, courtier."

"Ask and it shall happen, your loveliness."

"Tell Toadsworth, the stoolpigeons have gone to roost. He'll know what it means."

"Immediate I leave to, princess. Good night and blessings to you."

"Good night, good lad. Worry less. When you're able... You could revive some civic love. Plant some gardens, grow flowers. I'm personally fond of turnip blooms."

"*sniff*... Without question, princess. Fare thee well."

Her winged chariot took off to the wide blue skies. Guards, platoons, entire divisions, followed in their flying ships and on parabeetles' backs. Noise was deafening. The cheers for it also boomed, patriotic.

She led her pack like a biker den mother, just with royal poise and such kind inherent grace.

There would be blood.

To be continued...