And here it is, we all knew it was coming! With a new Fawful-centric game out, it was only a matter of time before I started a new chaptered fic.
Actually, I've been planning this one for a while. It's just that I felt it would be better if I waited...
So yeah! As with many of my other fics, this takes place in the On my Own timeline. For those of you unfamiliar with my other stories, it'll be really helpful if you read them before reading this. Especially Fragmented Spectrum, although An Evil a Day might help too. I dunno.
Oh, and the title? Again, my nasty habit of naming fics after songs.
Anyway, here we go!
...
Chapter one.
Fawful had been doing a lot of sulking as of late. After his failed attempt to absorb the Dark Star and take over the world, he'd spent several weeks just sitting in bed pouting. Eventually he decided that he really ought to get back on his feet again, but he did so with many frowns and grumbles.
Mimi had been coming around a lot lately, too. Maybe she was worried about him or, more likely, she was miffed that he kept rebuffing her attempts to cheer him up. Mimi and Fawful had met by chance one day and she'd decided quite on her own that they ought to be friends—Fawful, of course, was somewhat irked by this. However, he decided that he had too many enemies and too few allies, so he let her keep visiting because he didn't need one more person after his life.
Today, Mimi had her face pressed up against the glass of a giant test-tube set up in a side room. The tube itself was surrounded by various machines and had all sorts of cables and wires coming out of it.
"It's all fogged up," she said.
Fawful didn't respond as he went about typing on a nearby computer.
She moved her face away from the glass. "It's freezing, too! What're you keeping in here, huh?"
"It is not being the concern of you," Fawful said.
She huffed, stomping over to the computer terminal Fawful was using. She peered over the screen.
"Ugh," she said, "I can't make out what you're doing at all."
"It has much complicatedness," he said.
"Jeez," she crossed her arms and pouted for a moment. Then her face lit up. "Oh! I almost forgot. I got you something."
Fawful looked up at her as she sifted through her purse. Eventually she grinned up at him and pulled out a necklace with a cheap-looking piece of plastic on it.
"For you!"
Fawful blinked, puzzled. He took the necklace and looked at it. The piece of plastic was blue, shaped like a half-heart with jagged edges on the side where the other half would connect. The words "BEST FRIENDS" were written in indented letters on it.
"What is this being?" he asked.
"It's a friendship necklace!" she beamed, pulling out another, similar one. "See, you get that half and I keep this one."
"Why are you giving Fawful a necklace of friendship?" he asked.
"'Cuz we're totally BFFLs, duh," she shoved him a little, to emphasize the obviousness of her point.
"'Biffles'?" he looked down at the necklace, then back up at Mimi. "Fawful will not be wearing it."
"What?! But you gotta!" she shoved him again, harder this time. "I got it just for you!"
"How would it have looking for a villain of evilness to be wearing jewelry of friendship? It has absurdity!" Fawful said, not hiding his fury.
Mimi turned away, angrily toying with her curls. "Well, I GUESS that makes sense. It totally wouldn't go with any sorts of dictator-clothes I know of. But you could carry it around in like your pocket or something."
Wanting to get back to work, Fawful conceded. "Fine, Fawful will carry it."
She faced him again, smiling brightly. "You will? Aw, thanks, Fawfie!" She leaned over the terminal again. "Now will you tell me what you're doing?"
"No."
"Aw," she kicked a stray cable, then sat down on a nearby machine.
Fawful continued working in silence.
"I really don't like the new, quiet Fawful," Mimi said. "I wish you'd just cheer up already because I'm really not used to hearing you not chattering away."
"You have enough speaking for the two of us," Fawful said.
"Heeey," she crossed her arms, pouting, but then decided that hey, if he wasn't going to talk much, maybe she should speak enough for the two of them. It would at least drown out the sounds of the various sewer fluids sloshing about outside Fawful's shop. "You know what? Fine."
Fawful groaned. "I have fury."
She tried to think of a topic that would hold Fawful's interest. He probably wouldn't be interested in Harhall's new Fall line, nor in that new trick she'd learned to make her eyeshadow look fabulous. Hmm. Well, Nastasia had made her read a newspaper that morning, maybe he was interested in that.
"So apparently Merlon broke the universe," she said.
"If the universe had breaking we would not be in the place which is here," Fawful said.
She shook her head. "No, no, I mean it! Like, the newspaper said it. He was toying with magic and bam!—broken universe. Like, a huge hole got ripped in the world for a couple of minutes."
Fawful thought to himself that, indeed, some of his machines had read a disturbance in the fabric of space-time recently. "What had happening?"
Mimi shrugged. "Totally weird. Apparently the hole led to the Underwhere, and a couple dead people got out," she kicked her feet, looking down. "That stupid Dimentio got out, I heard. We should go beat him up."
Fawful typed a little into his machine. "Fawful does not have luckiness, so Fawful is assuming that his great mistress did not have the escaping of the afterlife?"
"Mistress?"
"I am referring to none other than the Great Cackletta, she who had the teaching of me everything I am knowing," Fawful said. He sighed a little. "As much as I am wishing it, the chances of her being among the ones with ability to escape are…"
"Umm," Mimi interrupted, "Actually, I think I saw her name on the list."
Every part of Fawful stopped. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, unable to move. His stomach twisted into a knot and stayed like that. He could barely even breathe. All he could manage to do was stammer out a weak "What."
Mimi nodded, imagining the name printed on the newspaper. "I'm almost sure of it. It said 'the Beanwitch Cackletta'. You said Cackletta, right?"
Fawful just sat there, unable to process what was being said to him. Cackletta had escaped the Underwhere. Cackletta was alive. She had been dead for over two years. Fawful had mourned her the whole time, had cried himself to sleep more times than he'd ever want to admit. She'd died. She'd died, but now she was…
She was…
Mimi was standing beside him now, putting a small hand on his shoulder.
"Fawfie?" she said. "Fawfie, are you okay?"
Fawful grabbed Mimi's hands and flew out of his chair, and before Mimi had any idea what was going on they were spinning around the room, dancing in circles around and around while Fawful smiled and laughed.
"The Great Cackletta has life~!" he sang in the most joyous tone she'd heard from him in a long time, "It is the end to all my strife~! The world all smiles upon Fawful~! And… um…," he stopped, ending the dance. "Ruu, Fawful still cannot have rhyming. But this does not matter!" Fawful started bouncing up and down. "The Great Cackletta has life! Mimi! She has life!"
"I know," Mimi said, a bit dizzy from being spun around. "I told you that."
"It is being a day of such wonderfulness!" Fawful beamed. "Where is she being? Do you have knowledge?"
"The article said they put her in jail," Mimi said, "Cuz she's a villain and all."
"Which jail?"
"The one near Toad Town, I think," Mimi said.
Fawful grinned wider and then ran to the other room. When Mimi followed, Fawful was already digging through his weapons cabinet.
"Are you gonna break her out?" Mimi asked.
"What else could Fawful be doing?" Fawful asked as he put a laser gun on his belt holster. "I cannot allow the Great Cackletta to be rotting in a jail like leftovers rot in the refrigerator of the Bowser. I must have rescuing!"
"Now, wait just a second," Mimi said, "Remember, Fawful, you're supposed to be dead too. I thought you were gonna stay under the radar and let everyone keep thinking you're dead so you can surprise them later."
"If Fawful is to be sacrificing the element of surprises," Fawful holstered another laser gun, "Then Fawful gladly does it for the Great Cackletta."
"Well, if you're sure…," Mimi shrugged. "Just don't be stupid and get yourself killed or anything."
Fawful laughed. "Prisons are easy to be breaking in and out of, have no worrying."
Fawful grabbed his Headgear and ran to the other side of the room, where his hover-platform was propped up against the wall. He pulled it down and fiddled with a control panel on its side. It began to hum, and he jumped on top of it as it began to spark and float.
"Now," Fawful said, joyously manic, "Fawful goes to reunite with the Great Cackletta!"
Fawful shot out of the shop and out of the sewer pipes. He vaguely heard Mimi shout "Good luck!" behind him, but he wasn't listening anymore. All he could think about was the Great Cackletta, his master and almost-mother, sitting in that prison, locked up but oh so alive. He'd rescue her. He'd rescue her, and then the world would know their fury.