Hero Pie
"Would you care to come over for some pie, Felix?"
The request was not an unusual one for the handyman to hear while relaxing at home in Niceland. He smiled as he heard the thoughtful offer on the phone and he felt his stomach rumble slightly at having heard the very mention of the word "pie".
"Why, that sounds rather delightful, Gene!" he replied enthusiastically, then his smile fell as he remembered something. "Oh, but Tammy and I were going to meet up at Tapper's later. She should be here within the hour."
Calhoun usually spent a good two hours after Litwak closed up the arcade to do her daily perimeter check. While she was busy doing that, Felix usually relaxed with a good book to read in order to pass away the time, which was what he was doing at the time of the phone call.
Felix heard a cough on the other end of the line and then, "Come now, Felix, it's been ages since we've hung out. I know you'd prefer to spend your time with an attractive blonde, but you need to make time for your other friends too. Feelings might get hurt."
The dark undertone of that last statement rubbed Felix the wrong way, but he decided that he was simply imagining things. Something told him to go ahead on to Tapper's but-
"You know what, you're right," Felix responded in a decisive manner. "It has been a while since I've come to visit."
He paused before adding, "But only for a few minutes, I don't want to keep Tammy waiting."
The handyman heard what sounded like a deep sigh. "As you wish, Felix. Just took the pie out of the oven, so it should be cooled off when you get here."
-click-
Gene's apartment was impeccably clean and neat, everything organized perfectly and in its proper place. One could say he was obsessive-compulsive, always fussing about other people's penthouses straightening up their picture frames or rearranging the silverware. Before Tamora entered into his life, Gene had made it a point to clean up Felix's place for him.
Although, if Felix was completely honest, he'd swear that his true intentions of "cleaning" was to snoop around.
But now Tamora was here and she did a dynamite job keeping his place in tip-top shape, keeping things as orderly as her own military-standard suite in Hero's Duty. The bedsheets were so tight when she made his bed that you could flip a coin on it and it would bounce off. Before his mind could wander too much on the bed, the intrusive voice of his host wormed its way into his ears.
"I'm glad you decided to come for a visit, Felix," the mustachioed Nicelander was saying as he brought a slice of pie over to his small table. "I really hope you like this. I worked very hard on it."
He placed the small serving plate in front of the blue-eyed hero along with a fork. The crust was perfectly tanned, the contents a pinkish brown color and dripping with the juices that served as filling. It was still steaming, the wisps of heat rising off of it into the air, carrying its scent into Felix's nostrils. He inhaled softly and his stomach rumbled.
"This looks delicious, Gene!" he complimented him, earning a gracious smile as a reward.
He picked up his fork and carefully stabbed the end of it to get a small piece. Gene watched him as he placed the bite into his mouth, chewing considerably and screwing his face up in curiosity.
"Say," he began after he had swallowed. "What kind of pie is this anyway?"
"It's just a simple meat pie," Gene replied to him, taking a seat on the other end of the table. "Do you like it? Is it good?"
"Yeah, it's kind of got a wild taste to it...kinda tangy, too...in a good way," Felix answered him truthfully, taking another bite. "Jiminy, Gene, you've really outdone yourself! I can't remember the last time I had a pie that wasn't a dessert."
The blocky man smiled at this. "I'm glad I could make you happy, Felix. It's nice to be noticed for the little things you do for others...like what we all do for you."
Again, something about the way he said it struck Felix as a little odd but he continued to shrug it off. Gene sat there and watched him with avid interest as he finished off his slice of pie, only getting up once to get him a glass of milk to wash it down with. Satisfied with his now full stomach, Felix patted his abdomen with one hand and dabbed his mouth with the napkin provided for him.
"What kind of meat did you use for this anyway?"
"Your wife."
Felix stared at the man sitting across from him, who had propped his elbows up on the table so that he could lace his hands together under his chin and was giving him a chillingly calm smile. The only sound to be heard was the ticking of the big grandfather clock in Gene's living room as the two observed each other. At last, Felix broke the silence by giving a nervous laugh.
"Wuh-what about my wife?" he inquired with an overly large grin to hide the anxiety he felt.
Gene chuckled. "No no, that was the answer to your question. You asked what kind of meat I used and I said your wife."
Sweat poured off Felix's brow yet he was too stunned to wipe it away. His heart thumped hard against his ribcage and he felt his stomach try to lurch the contents of his snack back into his throat.
"Gene...that...that isn't a very funny joke," he insisted firmly, trying to hide the quiver in his voice.
"Am I laughing, Felix?"
His remark was blunt and cold yet the faint smile never faded from Gene's lips. Felix's eyes wandered to the counter where the rest of the pie was located, it's oozing pinkish-brown contents visible from where he sat at the table.
Wild and tangy...he had said it tasted...
Felix retched, hastily placing his palm over his mouth and rushing over to the kitchen sink to empty the contents of the dish from his stomach. He blindly ran the tap as to wash out the vomit as he kept his head down, continuing to dry heave after he had succeeded in ridding himself of the pie. Tears ran down his face, his mind in a haze that this could even be happening.
Tammy...the pie...the meat pie...he...he had...
Gene continued to sit patiently at the table, watching Felix try to get a grip on himself. The handyman forced himself away from the sink once the nausea wore off and he turned the tap off, spinning around to face his neighbor.
"How...how could you..." he tried to say, his voice trembling and his whole body shaking with fright. "My wife!"
"Oh do pipe down, Felix," Gene chided him in an eerily even tone. "She made much less fuss than you are now."
Felix collapsed to the floor on his knees, tears steadily coming out of his eyes and loud sobs rolling out of him. His senses were failing him and his mind struggled to comprehend this mad turn of events.
"You want to know how I did it?" the other man asked of him, hopping down from his seat and pacing slowly towards the grieving hero. "She had actually passed off her perimeter check to another soldier and came by much earlier. Right after Litwak closed, if you want to know the whole truth. I stopped her and said that you were busy fixing something for Roy and asked if she'd like some tea while she waited."
"Stop...just stop, Gene," Felix begged of him, not wanting to hear any details.
"She accepted and we had a nice chat...about you of course." Gene stopped right in front of Felix and paused in his speech for a moment. "That was always the one thing that we had in common, Felix. I suppose she had some sense in her head for her to choose you."
He shrugged casually before adding, "Anywho, even with all her military training, she couldn't have deduced that the tea was poisoned."
Felix's blue eyes widened and he popped his tear-stained face upwards towards Gene, shock evident in his expression.
"You...you..."
"Yes, I poisoned her," Gene concluded for him as he stood there solemnly staring down at his protagonist. "How else would I man of my stature be able to take down a soldier like she was?"
He wandered over to the wet bar that was situated to the side of the kitchen while Felix imagined how it must have felt for his wife to be poisoned to death while he was sitting alone at home reading a book. The idea that this went on just a few floors down from his own penthouse made him cry again. Gene fixed himself a martini and sipped it down, placing the glass upside on the counter when finished.
"If you're curious, the poison was derived from a stolen poison mushroom from Mario's," Gene mentioned as if he were sharing a secret ingredient with him. "She went down fairly quickly and I knew I didn't have much time to get to work on her. The hardest part was sawing through the bones, since hers are much thicker than any of ours here." He paused again, looking upwards in thought. "Well, except maybe Ralph's. Boy, he'd be a beast to kill off."
He chuckled as if killing the wrecker would be an amusing hobby for him. Felix felt his stomach lurch again though nothing came out. The aftertaste of the pie returned to his mouth and he gagged a few times at the floor.
"Why?" he croaked out, not bothering to look up at the other man. Tammy...oh Tammy...
"Why?"
All humor and slight indifference escaped from Gene's attitude completely and it was replaced by dark sarcasm. Gene stepped back over to the despondant widower and he forced Felix's chin up with one hand, glowering at him in malice.
"The answer, Felix, is that you didn't deserve her," Gene softly growled at him, his eyes twitching ever so slightly. "She had only been here a whole week and already she had you wrapped around her fingers with her little peek-a-boo bangs and luscious curves and flirtatious way she sauntered around in her tight armor."
He threw Felix's chin down and he paced away from him a few steps. "I, however, had been here since the beginning. I practically made it my mission to serve you, give you anything your heart desired, make any obstacle in your life obsolete. I cleaned your house, I cooked your food, I made sure you were looked after when you went outside the game so you wouldn't accidentally get yourself killed."
"I never...asked you to do those things," Felix found himself saying out loud. "I thought you were doing those things just to be nice."
Gene spun on his heel to face him again. "Nice? Felix, this goes beyond being nice. I worshiped the ground you walked on. You were our hero. We all looked up to you." He thrust his arms out towards Felix to get his point across. "Everyone here, especially me, broke our backs to make sure you stayed happy and what is the thanks we get?"
He stomped back over to the handyman and put both hands on his face, forcing him to look at him again. "You go off and abandon us for the first skirt that catches your eye and spend all your time with her. You never visit any of us anymore or make time for us and, quite frankly, that hurts. It really hurts. All these years of devoted willing servitude and you dismiss us without so much as a second glance."
Felix was near hyperventilation as Gene spoke to him this way, his mind swirling as his reality underwent a massive overhaul. All he could think about was that Tamora was no longer going to grace him with her presence; he would never hear her laugh, see her smile, hear her talk, feel her touch, simply be herself and let her guard down only when she was with him. His Tammy, his dynamite gal...
Gene was rather shocked to see Felix's expression change from one of defeat to one of scowling fury. Rage filled every part of his code and he swiftly leaped up to tackle the blocky NPC down to the floor, his hands wrapping tightly around his fat neck.
"You selfish monster!" Felix spat at him as he struggled to keep his grip on Gene's throat, the murderer below him trying to protect himself. "I never failed to thank any of you for all that you've done! What more did you want! I did everything for you too! I always sacrificed my private time to help you or Mary or Roy or Deanna do something! Was it too much for me to finally have a life of my own and be happy?!"
Gene's wormed his legs underneath Felix's abdomen and kicked him off, the good guy flying backwards and clutching his stomach in agony. Gene abruptly stood himself, huffing heavily and fixing his jacket and tie back in its proper position.
"If I were you, I would calm down, Felix," he snipped, wiping his brow with his sleeve. "The poison spreads faster when you get upset."
Felix gaped in horror as he tried to crawl back into a sitting position on the floor. "Puh...puh..."
"Yes, poison," Gene finished for him impatiently as he went to fix himself another martini. "Geez, you got me all hot and sweaty."
"WHAT POISON!" Felix yelled angrily, his eyes lowering back into a glare. "Stop playing games with me, Gene!"
"Oh, I assure you, I'm not playing anything," the other replied calmly as he swirled the remains of his drink around in the glass, leaning back against his bar to watch Felix cautiously. "You see, I knew the poison in your wife would cook itself out so I laced that milk you drank with some more that I had. You should feel the effects in-" He paused to roll up his sleeve so he could look at the watch on his arm. "About fifty seconds."
Panic set in and Felix forced himself to stand up, using the countertop as an aid. His hand reached for his tool belt. Maybe he could-
"And don't bother hitting yourself with your hammer," Gene told him before he finished his drink. "It won't do anything."
Felix stopped and stared wildly at him. "But...but I'm part of this game, I can't die in my own game!"
Gene shook his head to the floor and clucked at him in disappointment. "Yes, but the poisonous mushroom is not part of this game. It acts like a virus when given to someone that is not a member of the Mario games."
Understanding hit Felix harder than one of the bricks that Ralph dropped on him during a gaming session. He once more plopped to the hard floor, completely broken and defeated. Everything he loved, everything he had worked for in his entire life, was gone...taken from him. There was nothing the hero could do about it.
"Don't you realize that when I die, the game will be unplugged?" he whispered softly as another tear ran down his face.
Gene shrugged and began to file his nails nonchalantly. "What do I care? You were the only thing that kept me around anyway. My purpose was to be your loyal servant and since that job was taken from me, there is no reason for me to stay here."
He glanced at his watch again. "Five seconds."
Felix barely had time to get two breaths in and out when he suddenly felt a sharp agonizing pain surge through his entire body, so painful in fact that he could not even scream or utter any sort of noise. It overtook his senses as the poison fulfilled its duty in corrupting his code, literally melting him away. All his memories flashed through him yet he was in so much pain he could not properly reflect on them. Blue binary flicked haphazardly in a random pattern until-
Gene stood by silently sipping his third martini for the night as he watched Felix go through self-deletion. It had taken longer for him to die than the sergeant had, due to the handyman's code attempting to regenerate itself since he was dying in his own game. After half an hour had passed, he breathed his last as he laid on the floor of Gene's kitchen, never to be seen or heard from again.
The Nicelander sighed once his show was over and he sat his empty glass down on the counter for the time being. He grabbed Felix by the hands and began to pull him across the floor, his body sliding lifelessly the whole way. Gene finally stopped upon getting to the carpeted living room behind the couch so that Felix's code could disintegrate there in privacy. It would take a while for the body to disappear completely as, again, this was Felix's game so it would take him longer to do this. Calhoun had taken nearly no time at all, only allowing Gene very little time for him to amputate her arm, which is what he had butchered to make the pie with.
Wiping his hands on the side of his pants, Gene mused about how sad it was that Felix was now gone, all the times in the past they had spent together floating through his mind. However, he had been betrayed by the protagonist and now his revenge had been served.
Whistling the game's theme song, he walked back into the kitchen and dipped his finger into Felix's pie and then sucked the filling off his finger. Then he reached into the oven to pull out a second pie that he had been letting cool off during Felix's visit. He placed it into a pie container with a lid so it would be safe on its journey downstairs and out of the penthouse.
"Ralph said he hates chocolate," he said to himself as he locked his door to leave. "Let's see if he likes vanilla."
What is this? I wrote something that doesn't have Turbo in it? I must be sick. In fact, I must be sick for writing something like this. Hope none of you readers are having pie anytime soon ;) *evil laugh*