Oh, how the mighty hath fallen. Or rather, how high the weak have chosen to look up.
This kingdom has always been a festering mess, a wasteland of corruption and decadence. We merely fool ourselves, seeing the grim reality only when we've been knocked down, on our knees by the vicious reality of this existence, and the water comes rushing into the pathetic little shelter we've made for ourselves. The heartbeat of this grimy city has always been weak and diseased, and only when we stop lying to ourselves can we hear it for what it really is. The only difference between me and every sad sap I pass on this street is that I listen, I look, I touch.
As I pass the stores paying local crime lords to not rob them, as I pass alleys where drugs and money exchange hands by the most desperate of people, as I pass dark corners where the worst humankind can offer lie in wait to claim their prize, be it money or sex, I wish I were blind, deaf, and dumb. I wish that this accursed place had never pried my senses from their blissfully ignorant slumber, that I was still as happy as any fool who looked the other way.
When I close my eyes, he is still as clear as day. A young drag racer in his prime, caring only for the thrill of the road and his prize money. Women clamoured for him, sponsors lined up to get their few square feet on his car, and he hadn't a care in the world. His ignorant smile showed everything wrong with his complacent life, but with the success of his savant-like racing ability, he didn't care.
I can't even call it my story anymore, for it feels so long ago that it can't possibly be me. Everything was so different back when the sunlight actually seemed to make this putrid city seem brighter. But yes, I suppose that it still was me, as faint as it may seem.
On top of the world, it seemed, Captain Falcon, the break-out racing star of the Mushroom Kingdom. I don't even know why they started calling me "Captain", but it made me feel official, and it certainly beat "Falcon". Everything was perfect, except for one thing; this wasn't the town for fair players.
The Koopa Gang made it very clear that they owned the drag race circuit. When I began winning too often, they lost their patsy, the former champion "Samurai" Goroh. They needed to control whoever was on top, and that was me. I had two options; start paying them my dues and gain their protection, or they'd ensure I never raced again.
Idealism's a bitch, ain't it?
If Bowser had his way, I would be, too.
Such is the story of this whole damn kingdom. Beneath the blanket of sunlight that makes everything seem brighter lies a dark world, the real world. The underbelly of the kingdom is full of people fallen from a grace they never had. Drug dealers, strippers, and beggars, were all people trampled by the vicious reality of this accursed place. We weren't the bottom rung of the ladder, we were the people who knew our place. It's the poor fools thinking themselves any higher than us who are at fault. Only the powerful are exempt from this fucking misery.
You learn things when your senses are alert. A sentence passing by an alley, an exchange of goods between two people you may recognize, the rumours that your acquaintances have picked up. Suddenly, everything isn't so great. The wars between local stations aren't for ratings, they're because crime lords own the stations and want to syphon money from the competition. The most inept princess in the kingdom is only in control because the other two have "vanished", but few know just how foolish Princess Daisy really is, how easily she has become a pawn, her court full of lackeys from across the spectrum of scum in this town, all vying for control of her decisions. The few straight cops still on the beat have been so frightened by their corrupt colleagues that they themselves do nothing any more. Nothing is sacred any more.
What happens when the whole system, from the top down, is crawling with pure malevolence? You break free of everything and do your damnedest Idealism isn't refusing to do something wrong, it's giving up everything to do something right. It's the only hope this city still has.
So no, I won't race again. And I haven't since then, seeing as they destroyed the Blue Falcon. Instead, I'll vanish into the sea of filth and crime and decadence that is the inner city, and I will do my damnedest
The rumours abound; Captain Falcon, wandering the streets. It's an urban myth, everyone says, and nobody will admit that they were attacked by a man with a racing helmet and no weapons. For filth, they certainly have their pride.
They'll never find me, though. My helmet always covered my face, and I won't dare show it by the freeway anymore, meaning my face is just one in a million. A bowling bag hides the helmet perfectly, and a trench coat isn't an attention-getter, it's a damn season ticket to the roller coaster of debauchery that is the Mushroom Kingdom.
The convenience of it is, you don't have to look far to find somewhere to intervene. Just as I decided it was time to do some hunting, a scream, muffled a second after it began, rang from a nearby alley. I didn't have to think twice.
I ducked into the alley, tossing aside my trench coat and bowling bag as the darkness obscured me, hanging them on the bottom rung on an apartment balcony's ladder; at this hour, there was no reason anyone would use it. With my identity safe, my feet sprang to life, freed of their arbitrary prison. Under the cover of darkness my suit was invisible. My feet seemed to never actually touch the ground as I quickly gained ground on the attackers. Life in the darkness gave me the ability to see things much clearer in the muddled alleys, but even still I needed only find the source of their flashlights' spotlights.
Two Koopas, both wearing the obvious signs of Bowser's gang, had blades against a female Toad's neck as they pressed her against the wall. It was clear what they wanted to do, and it sickened me. Even in a city like this, a city built on lust for power, money, and flesh, where hookers were showing on every corner and strip clubs across the cost range were within spitting distance, the scum of this city think themselves entitled to those pleasures for free.
I sprung up, shouting as my foot connected with the first Koopa's head. Coming back, I pressed against the wall and repeated the process on the other Koopa. The sounds of metal clattering against the ground preceded the dull thuds of their shells following suit as the woman took the opportunity to run. With her out of the way, I could really lay the hurt on these thugs.
"What the fuck kind of nut job are you?" howled the second one down as the first grabbed his knife, not even rising to his feet the full way as he dove for me. Need I even bother dodging? With a swift swing, my foot sent the Koopa hurtling back into the other, and now it was my turn.
I curled my fist, breathing in heavily as I pulled back, my body heating up as the terrified Koopas watched, paralysed, bewildered, resigned to their fates. "Falcon..." I bellowed, and the deal was done.
**********************(scene break)**********************
With that business taken care of, it was time to check up on some things. The streets were rarely silent, but they were also rarely right. I trusted few sources to give me information, especially in a world dealing largely in deception.
Sidling up through the back of the building, I quickly scaled the ladder and balconies in total silence. As expected, the door was left unlocked for me, allowing me to slip right in to the pitch-black apartment. Sight wasn't the best indicator of activity in this place, though, and indeed the heavy scent of sweat told me something was up. Through an ajar door I could hear the unmistakable sound of flesh against flesh and the impassioned moans of two people in the throes of ecstasy. As I peered in, I could see a mass of flesh and a blonde ponytail writhing. The woman lay on top, riding him, with the top half of a skintight blue bikini the only thing on her body.
"Samus, if you'd please hurry up and kill him already, it's that time of the week."
"What? Kill me? Who the fuck are you?" asked a voice with the unmistakable accent of a northern kingdomer, likely one of Ganondorf's goons. Nothing followed except for a faint grown as the woman dismounted him, not even bothering to cover herself up. With her out of the way, I could clearly see his throat was slit clean across. He never stood a chance.
There stood one hell of a woman. Her long, curved form swayed as she walked toward me, her untarnishable smile betraying her disappointment that I ruined her fun so soon. "That's the third time in a row you've cut me short. I was hoping to actually have an orgasm tonight, you know."
Samus never lived under the idea that this was anything more than a shithole with a smile, but she milked it for all it was worth. A military elite turned woman of the street, Samus preferred to find her owns ways of dealing with the scum of the street. She was freelance, working clubs across the kingdom, and offering a service that gave her generous pay from every crime lord and small-time gang leader in the kingdom; a lap dance, a fuck, and an assassination. It was a great way to take out lower-level goons in need of silencing or even someone who knew her secret but also knew better than to resist the "generosity" of their superiors. Samus was mean. efficient, and did her job well even before the killing came into play.
"So what do you need to know?" she asked, sitting cross-legged at her sad excuse for a dinner table and lighting up a cigarette. It was a strange sight, someone opposing all the crime lords working for all of them, wanting something more while contributing to the decay that kept her down. It was a paradox in a world of paradoxes, and she was always good for information.
"Princess Zelda's still alive, and she's hiding out somewhere." I threw two coins onto the table.
"Yes." We didn't even ask questions any more, she would just tell me if I was right.
"Wario is trying to take Mario down and prove to Bowser that he deserves a promotion." Two more coins hit the table.
"Yes."
"There's only two straight cops left." My final two hit the table halfway and bounced to meet the others.
"No, one. Saki handed in his resignation yesterday."
"Still, pretty accurate by the streets' standards."
"Is that really all you've come for?" She asked. Now that business was dealt with, she had no reason to not try, since I gave her the coins. Her legs spread open and her entire face now moved to match her seductive smile. "On the house."
I turned around. "I've told you before, Samus. We both do what we have to, but what we had between us is, for the time being, over. You're losing your head in all this. Cut out this work and then we can."
"You know I can't do that, Falcon."
"You will," were my last words as I shut the door behind me, tightening my trench coast I moved down the metal stairs in the same silence I climbed them in. That was not the sight I wanted to see. I'd stick to my promise, though. Strange how I clung to what little faith I still had in people. In such an insane place, where the only standards anyone held were "survive" and "become more powerful", I seemed alone in my humanity. Well, not quite, and with Samus' words, I knew that there were a few people still left to invest my hopes in, and it was time to pay them visits.
**********************(scene break)**********************
If I gained one thing from my mad quest, it was a knowledge of the streets that few could best. All the buildings in this place look the same, but even without the numbers, I know what building has someone I need. An address is nothing when the building's signature is right there; the unique blend of whatever drugs they're cooking wafting into the street, the damage the face of the building has endured during gang fights, and the little markers all buildings have that denote exactly what lies within; whores, dealers, business...they become a much more reliable system than a number. It becomes a language by itself, a way of subtly dropping a location. When you opened yourself to that, you never paid too much attention to addresses.
I stepped into the old building, surprised the door was able to stay on its hinge as I pulled it open. This was the bottom of the barrel, the utter worst part of town. Not even most crime lords cared about controlling this part of town, but then again the cops wouldn't patrol here even without gang activity, which meant the whole place was crawling with Koopas. I was amazed; I thought I had a bad wake-up.
The peeling paint in the halls and the powerful smell of drugs confirmed that if there was any place in this fetid, lawless city that could be declared worse than another, this was surely it. Even with the cool air outside, it felt stagnantly hot, as if instead of walls were space heaters. It was overbearing, but I had to keep my trench coat on. This was not the place to go showing the sleek uniform beneath it.
I knocked on the door in a rapid pattern, assuring the people within that it was safe to open the door, and exactly what my business was. It was a necessary precaution in this world, for those who had no allies in high places, no real protection.
It took a moment, but finally I saw a small slit open in the door and a wide eye peer at me. The eye disappeared and the click told me that it was unlocked. I stepped in, closing the door silently.
"Who is it, 'Igi?" slurred a heavily accented voice. There, on the couch, sat a testament to the soul-crushing power of reality. A fat, mustachioed man in a grease-stained wife beater and jeans sat on the couch with a beer in his hand and a pile of them all over the floor. It was a sight that I found difficult to behold. One of the few people you could call a hero in this writhing mess of a kingdom had been hit worse than anyone.
Few people dared to stand up to Bowser back when Princess Peach was in charge. Mario was one of the few willing to fight him, and he did. Several times he ended up marching right into wherever she was held with a very small group of people, and rescuing her. With Daisy, however, he need not bother with kidnapping so long as his second-in-command Kamek acted as the princess's adviser. With his whole hero status down the shitter, Mario tried finding other work. He had many jobs, at one point even faking a medical licence, but the alcohol caught up with him every time. He couldn't stay sober, and eventually nobody would hire him, leaving Luigi to take care of him and scrounge up some money for his brother to drink away. Nothing could save him now.
"It's Falcon," his brother, a tall, skinnier man said without a hint of alcohol on his voice. Good, at least one of them was sober. "Do you have the information?"
I nodded. "Wario is looking to get a promotion out of Bowser, and the presence of this unknown gang is making things a lot harder for Bowser. He's too preoccupied to worry about things like that, so Wario needs a way to earn his favour. The rumours are true; Wario's coming for you two."
"Good," burped the fallen hero, tossing aside his empty bottle and moving right for another one. "Finally, a fucking vacation."
"Brother, don't talk like-"
"No! I've had it with all of this bullshit. Peach has been driven out of the kingdom, Bowser runs half this place like his personal fucking toilet, and I'm stuck on this fucking couch guzzling this piss water. I'm tired of it. Now get him the fuck out of here!"
"Brother, he's just-"
"Now!"
Luigi turned to me, but I understood. "He's turned his back on the kingdom when they need it most, and now the kingdom will turn his back onto him." I leaned in, saying in a much quieter tone, "I'm close, Luigi. I have a few people I can almost confirm. I'll try to send a couple over and hopefully stop Wario dead in his tracks."
Luigi shook his head. "What kind of insane world has this become, Falcon?"
"It's always been this way, but it won't for long." Again, much louder, I said, "Goodbye, 'hero'."
I could hear a bottle smash against the door as it shut behind me. In a town like this, we didn't have heroes. We just had people who took a while to crack.