---Pianta Girl---

-----Part I----

A Moonlit Meeting

Mario was kicking around town one day in November. Rogueport had been scary at first, but ever since he got an apartment with his buddy Luigi, he had actually learned to like it. Besides, West Rogueport, where he lived, wasn't quite as scary as the East, where calumny and deception seemed to reign supreme.

Mario awoke one Wednesday night in a cold sweat. He had been dreaming, evidently. But his dream had been so vivid. He was playing his favorite airplane game at the Pianta Parlor, and he was doing better than he had ever done, better than is even possible in real life. The marker read 1200 meters! And he was about to land on a square that showed "x20", meaning his score would be multiplied by 20. But when he landed, the square turned into Geraldine, the pallid receptionist from the Pianta Parlor.

"What a wacko dream," Mario thought to himself. But there was something exciting about the dream as well.

"Do I have the hots for Geraldine, or what?" the Stache King searched himself, but couldn't seem to come to a decision. He didn't NOT like her, that was for sure. Yet at the same time, Geraldine wasn't someone he would call totally hot. She was a ghost, for Bowser's sake! But some new, mysterious feeling was coming to life in Mario. Could he possibly have fallen for a ghost? What would Princess Peach think?

Then he remembered to himself, "Oh yeah. I forgot...Princess Peach is a high-maintenance bitch. She seems so sweet, and she's so physically hot, but she's always demanding, and whining, and is also a downright ditz. Life surely can't just be about sex. Even for me, a pixelated hero, there must be something more."

So Mario got up from bed, changed his boxers, and descended the creaky steps, stepping out into the main courtyard of West Rogueport.

He checked his pocketwatch. It was 9:58 pm. "No, that can't be," he thought. "I went to bed at 10 pm..." Then he remembered he must have set his watch to Petalburg time, and forgot. Petalburg is two hours behind West Rogueport, so it must be...11:58 pm.

"Excellent," Mario mumbled. "Geraldine gets off work in two minutes!"

Mario walked over to the Pianta Parlor, to where those neon lights shown in all their electric brilliance. He decided the best tactic would be that of surprise. There were some dirty trashcans next to the entrance. Opening one up, he hopped in.

"Mario?" said Darkly. "What are you doing in my trashcan?"

"Oh, sorry," Mario said in shock. "I thought this one was vacant. I um...well I'll just switch to another one."

"Whatever gets you off, pal," replied the gothic being, Darkly.

Mario emerged from the trashcan reeking of garbage, and with a banana peel stuck to his forehead. He suddenly got goosebumps all over. Something was wrong. He looked up. The neon Pianta sign was turned off. There door was locked. That means...

From behind him he heard the aeolian voice as if for the first time, "Mario...come with me, Let me whisk you away. We shall ride on the ethereal winds, and go to the land of milk and honey, where I will teach you the ways of the ghost, and we will watch Beetlejuice and Ghostbusters all day..."

Except that wasn't really what Geraldine said. Mario had a pretty healthy imagination, so that his thoughts often bordered on hallucination. But he quickly came to and realized that Geraldine was standing behind him, and had seen him getting out of a trashcan.

"Mario!" Geraldine yelled, concernedly. "Mario! I'm talking to you! Why were you in that trashcan? Have you been shooting those stars again? I thought you just got out of rehab for that..."

The shamefaced Stache King turned around. Geraldine's wan pallor expressed such an exotic, almost alien type of raw beauty. A high, crescent moon cast a mystical light on all her features. There is nothing quite like nighttime in Rogueport. This happens when videogamers turn off their systems.

"Mario! Please...just say something!" Geraldine pleaded, a desperate look in her eyes.

"Geraldine, I...I...," Mario stammered. "Would you like to walk down to the pier, so we can talk?" A genius tactic. Girls, ghosts or not, love romantic places like a pier in the moonlight.

"Okay," replied Geraldine, seeming to hide a faint smile, or so Mario thought.