I refuse to explain myself. :p


"Vendetta" was a dreadful story and I scrapped it. This one will be similar but its more contemporary and lacking all that goofiness about clubbing on an island.

--shrugs—

If anyone still cares. Thank you. The sunshine is made of your smiles.

"You know," Mario began, "I don't think back home I ever saw such a clear and beautiful night sky."

"Didn't they have stars in Brooklyn?" Peach frowned, struggling to annunciate the name of Mario's birthplace.

Mario laughed. "I'm sure they were hiding somewhere behind all the smog."

"Smog?"

"Big clouds of it that these giant mouth-like towers belched up."

Peach made a face which drew more laughter from her fellow night watcher.

"Even so, there's something about the stars here, I've never seen anything like them." He pointed to a big, bright yellow one that actually seemed to be shaped the way you would teach a little kid to draw one.

Peach glanced up at the sky but didn't seem to be so mystified.

Mario positioned himself on his back and felt that he could have fallen into a heavenly sleep, pillowed by the soft grass. The courtyard was his favorite place to be, and he would have loved nothing more than to spend days listening to the singing fountain, uninterrupted.

Peach cast a longing gaze upon him and sighed.

"What's the matter Princess?"

She cringed at his inquiry, she hated when anybody called her Princess, especially him.

"Mario, you've been here so long it seems, and I feel that I know almost nothing about you."

"Don't be silly Princess; you've been a great friend."

She furrowed her brow in annoyance. She had never found men very easy to talk to, apparently that difficulty was insurmountable anywhere, even in other WORLDS.

"But—you've been here…. You've been here…"

Mario chuckled again. The Toadstools didn't keep track of time the way humans did. They didn't really seem to track time at all. " 6 months?"

"yes! And I feel that short of being rescued off and on I've spent very little time with you. What have we really talked about? What have you really told me? I've only heard you mention your home in passing every now and then. I don't even really know how you got here."

Mario was slightly taken aback. Everybody knew the way that he felt about the Princess. Everybody knew that he wasn't pursuing the search for a way home as actively as he should have been, but he'd never really put a lot of thought into what they actually WERE.

"I never knew you thought about it."

"..I do. Every Day."

They looked into eachothers' eyes for a moment. The sounds of the outside world seemed to halt for them.

Peach continued. "I want to know you Mario. I want to know where you come from."

Since Mario had first arrived--- 6 months ago---- he had persistently been Peach's life line. It seemed like a lot of trouble to go to for some girl he hardly knew that wasn't really one of his people. He and his brother had saved and befriended both Peach and her cousin Daisy Sarasa, but it seemed dubious that anything would come of it. The Mario brothers came from somewhere "beyond"…and maybe someday they would want to go back.

"Well, Brooklyn is a city." Mario said. "Kind of like the mushroom kingdom, but bigger and less colorful. Everything there was kind of Gray and dirty."

Peach crinkled up her nose, and then realized she was being rude and quickly undid her face.

"It was exciting though. There were always people and things to see. These bright yellow cars called 'taxis' were the way that people got around, not warp pipes. And Luigi and I lived in a room inside this big building that was skinny but stood really tall."

Peach tried to envision it. What she imagined was something like the highest tier of a castle with yellow koopas swirling around it, and everything in black and white.

"To stay alive, we had to go into the city and get jobs to earn money. Only we didn't use koopa coins." He took out a dollar bill and handed it to the princess, who looked befuddled.

"This is just green paper!" she exclaimed. "And who's that funny looking man?"

Mario tried to suppress an overpowering cackle. "Oh mamma mia. Time for a history lesson. That man is the FIRST president of my home country and an important war leader. A president is basically a ruler, kind of like a king, but with less respect."

"War? You mean like fighting?"

"Yes, only…the ultimate goal is to kill the other people, and its USUALLY done for political reasons'"

"I don't think we've ever had anything like that here." Peach said listlessly. "So what Jobs did you do in the city?" she asked, Straightening up and trying to appear already wise to what he was telling her.

"well, Weege and I had already inherited our family's plumbing Business. Our Pop died when we were just babies, and our mom disappeared ten or so years ago. The business wasn't really enough to get by, and there weren't any princesses needing to be saved, so Weegie worked as a pizza boy on the side and I went into construction for a while. I wanted to save up some money to go to school for cooking, but it wasn't so easy like I thought it would be."

Peach couldn't imagine why anyone would go to school to learn how to cook or why it would cost so much, but she just nodded and gave him a sympathetic look.

"My mama told me everything about cooking. I could have been a really great Chef. If you're in the mood for Italian, I'm the man to talk to!"

Peach had no idea what Italian was, but she didn't want Mario to think she was any stupider.

"So how in the world did you get here!?"

Mario pursed his lips. "Most of its kind of blurry to me, but we'll chalk it up to a bad plumbing accident. Talk about your worst nightmare! Roaming lost in the sewer network! Luigi and I had to lay low down there for days fighting off these weird little guys with spiky shells and plotting ways to get out. Somehow we found an opening but instead of climbing out, brushing ourselves off and going home, it kind of sucked us up and spat us out here."

Peach gasped and threw her arms around him in a panicked hug. "I'm so sorry Mario! I've been so horribly selfish! I swear to you I will find out how to get you home, no matter what it takes."

Mario smiled. His insides turned to goo. Here it came, his big mouth. "I don't necessarily want to go home."

Peach looked at him in awe. "but Mario, you can't stay here! What about your home? What about your dream?"

"I'm not so sure it's my home anymore…or my dream."

Peach looked baffled. "well…what is?"

Mario gave her an innocent smile and leaned in for a quick, sentimental kiss.

…and he couldn't help but wonder if the Princess had ever kissed a man in overalls before.

Yes I am lame. And I have some kind of problem with starting stories at any other time of day besides night. Something like 8 percent of kids have it. (Watch Superbad)

So now that you have read, write me your sentiments. And if you skipped to the bottom like a jerk, read it. Thoroughly. Let it massage your brain.