#002. Large Mac

Starring:
Ness
Mario
Little Mac

As the prime hub for all that had to do with lifestyle and entertainment, the Western Wing was filled with restaurants of stunning variety that boasted the local flavors of their home franchises, from the arcane and alien dishes of Chozo Chow-Out to the delicious, earthly homecooking of Louie Louie's Notes. Representing the fast food craze in the heart of Bronx, New York, was LittleMacDonalds, which was a fairly popular choice among many of the Smashers, due to its quick service and juicy burgers. The partially-eponymous boxer himself could be seen behind the counter occasionally, working a job to get himself some extra Smash bucks.

Today was one of those days. It was nearing the end of the early breakfast traffic, and Mac breathed a final sigh of relief as he observed the thinning of the line before him. Truth be told, he would much rather be doing one of his hardcore training regiments that Doc Louis put him through – sets of three hundred push-ups, three hundred hanging sit-ups, hundred-fifty jumps, and a full ten minutes of shadow boxing. Listening to the three hundredth order of the classic Punch-Out! Burger, handling the three hundredth wad of bills and calculating the correct change, making his hundred-fiftieth trip to the fryer to collect the fries, all done within the packed constraint of ten minutes, more than rivaled the intensity of some of his lesser work-outs, without the added benefit of the encouragement that every second of pain transmuted to a valuable increment in his boxing ability.

The next customers walked up to the counter, and automatically Mac recited, "Hello, welcome to LittleMacDonalds. May I take your order –" He took a better look at the Smashers standing before him. "Oh shit. Not you guys!"

"Hi Macky," Ness grinned as he and Yoshi leaned forward on the counter. "How you feeling today?"

"Fine, thanks. What would you like to order?" Mac replied in a building aggressive tone as he tried to open a drawer where he kept his earplugs, though this was a little hard to do with boxing gloves on.

"Oh, well…" Ness gave an impression of being torn between the conflicting choices of what to get for breakfast as he tapped his cheek with his finger, furrowing his brow while Yoshi failed to suppress a snicker. "You know, I was going to ask for a Big M –"

"Hold it!" comes a voice from nowhere, and time immediately stands still as the scene quickly becomes drained of all color. A different incarnation of Ness, fully-colored unlike the one frozen in mid-sentence, rises from below to the screen of your imagination that was conjuring the events occuring before this shocking fourth-wall breaking interruption. "Hate to interrupt," the interloping Ness says, "but looking at some of the terminologies used in the current state of the story, it won't surprise me if this idiot author is hit by a copyright infringement from a multi-billionaire company!" Ness shakes his head, takes out a pencil, and crosses out the 'Big' just a paragraph above and replaces it with a different word. "That's better," Ness says, standing back and admiring his handiwork. "And by Virginia Joyce's Law of Stupidly Consistent Yet Illogical Continuous Changes, that means that all possible lawsuit-inciting real-life product names will now be changed to their benign fanfiction equivalent." Ness pats himself proudly on the back, pockets his pencil, and then shouts: "Resume story!"

"– Lagre Mac, but –"

The scene freezes and becomes stripped of all color as Ness rises up for the second time, smile of confidence turned to sheepish grin. He takes the eraser end of his pencil and rubs at what he wrote. "Spelling mistake," he grins, writing the word correctly this time as the cloud of dusty pencil-markings clears away, "but hey, who doesn't make mistakes?" The word fixed, he retreats back into the undefined bottom of the screen from whence he came.

"– Large Mac, but… I'm not really sure if you're… Big enough to serve me that."

"I'm the perfect size to serve just about anything, thanks. What is your order?" Mac stressed the last question as he finally got the drawer open. There it was, the little orange earplugs of soft silicone, but now the challenge came in trying to pick them up, which was a little hard to do with boxing gloves on.

"Hey, Yoshi," Ness said loudly as he ignored Mac, turning to his dinosaur friend. "You know what they call a Merry Meal in Onett? You know, the set meal they have for small, little children?"

"They don't – ahem – call it a Merry Meal?" Yoshi replied, trying his best not to let the giggles get the best of him.

"No man, we got the midget system. We wouldn't know what the fuck a Merry Meal is."

"Then what do you call it?"

"Oh my God!" Little Mac cried, feeling the color rise to his face as he finally succeeded in picking up the earplugs. He was now trying desperately to force it into his ears in order to block out the answer he knew was coming, but this was a little hard to do with boxing gloves on.

There was a dramatic hush as Ness kept his silence for a second, savoring the tense moment. Then he answered, "Le Little Mac."

The reaction was immediate. Ness bent over with pure jubilation scrunching up his face, cackling triumphantly as he grabbed his stomach. Yoshi finally let the laughter out, pounding his fists madly against the counter. The whole restaurant had somehow managed to hear the exchange between Ness and Yoshi, and there were grins, giggles, and equally-hearty laughter as everyone took part in the shaming of Little Mac.

"May I just take your fucking orders, please?" Little Mac roared over the noise, throwing the earplugs down as he smashed his fists together to ease off some of the unbearably mounting frustration.

"Hey Yoshi," Ness managed to wheeze out as he steadied himself with a hand against the counter, once again turning a blind eye to the reddening cashier before him, "what's the smallest laptop in the world?"

"I don't –" There was a huge intake of breath as Yoshi gasped, filling his drained lungs with glorious oxygen. "I don't know. What is it?"

"Little Mac."

Howls and gales of laughter rang in what was apparently the smallest laptop in the world's ears as he felt his own pulse pound inside his skull. A bull-like rage turned his mouth into a gritting rectangle of teeth, his forehead a throbbing plane of fiery red, his eyes bulging, burning orbs that threatened to catch his furiously steeping eyebrows on fire. "One more time," he said through the clenched spaces between his teeth, "one more fucking joke and I swear –"

"Hey, hey Yoshi," Ness gasped as he wiped a tear from his eye, "what – you know what pasta's best when you're only a little bit hungry?"

"Ha –" Yoshi took a slight breather, holding up a finger to ask Ness to give him a second. He gulped air, then whispered, "Spa – spaghetti?"

"Nah, just a Little Mac 'n' cheese."

"You little shit! I'll punch that fucking smirk right off your face!" Little Mac screamed, finally losing it as he pounced forth and grabbed Ness by his collar, his left fist reeled back to devastate Ness's face with an unrestrained punch that would make even Mike Tyson cry like a little bitch in jealousy, a feat that was not a little hard to do with boxing gloves on. Ness saw his life flash before his very eyes as they widened in terror, and then promptly closed them as Little Mac released, thousands of fibers of steeled muscles stretching and pulling as the fist hurled itself towards Ness's face –

"Stop right there, Mac!"

The crowd immediately shifted their eyes from the brutality that was about to take place to the source of the voice. It seemed as though to possess a magical quality that forced all to obey its command, for Little Mac's fist stopped instantaneously, mere centimeters from smashing into Ness's face. The heckling youngster opened his eyes a tad before he closed them again quickly, frightened by the great big green sun of a fist that occupied his entire vision.

"What the hell do you think you're doin', Mac baby?" Doc Louis asked disapprovingly as he stepped out from the kitchen door behind the counter, slinging a rag over his shoulder. "What did I tell you about punching innocent civilians, huh?" Doc smacked Mac on his back, and the boxer let go of Ness, who fell to the floor, tried to get up weakly, and ended up falling into Yoshi's arms. Mac closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, the red in his face slowly dissipating as it returned to his normal, tanned color. He was just about to turn around and explain things when Doc Louis cut across him.

"Well, whatchoo waiting for, Mac baby? Apologize!"

"But Coach!" Mac complained as he pointed at Ness with his glove. "He – he was making fun of my height!"

"Was he now?" Doc shot a quick look at the feebly shaking Ness before snorting and turning back to Little Mac. "What's wrong with you, boy? Didn't you learn how to pay these things no mind when you were in the ring? I'm disappointed in you, Mac – lettin' the words of a thirteen-year old get to your head like that!"

"But Coach, you don't understand – the things he said –"

"You let them get to you like that, you never gonna win the championships and defend your title." He shook his head. "I apologize for Mac's behavior," he said gently to Ness as he leaned over and dropped a chocolate bar in his shaking hands. Ness took a look down at the bar. The act of kindness, as well as the continuous pats on the back from Yoshi, seemed to ward off some of his terror, and he muttered, "Th – thanks, Doc."

"Ya know, it ain't every day when you can rile up Mac baby like that," Doc said thoughtfully as he scratched his chin. "How 'bout you lay one of your jokes on me, eh? Whaddya say to Mac that mess him up so much?"

"Coach!" Mac began to whine again, but Doc put up a meaty hand as he looked at Ness expectantly. Ness looked at the hulking, former heavyweight champion, looked at the annoyed lightweight who dared him to utter another word with a hardened glare, and then looked to the inquisitive face of Doc Louis again, before looking down at his twiddling thumbs and muttering, "Well – I mean – what do you –"

"I can't hear you, Ness baby, speak up," Doc Louis said cheerfully as he took a bite out of another chocolate bar.

"What I said was," Ness said louder and clearer this time, training his eyes away from the increasingly angry Little Mac, "well, one thing I said was – what pasta do you eat when you're not that hungry?"

Doc scratched his chin again as he chewed slowly on his chocolate. "I dunno, spaghetti?"

"No, just a Little Mac 'n' cheese."

There was no reaction whatsoever from Doc Louis, and Mac felt great affection and increased respect gush through him as he looked at his coach happily. He never should have doubted him. Coach, who was always there for him; Coach, who always stood up for him; Coach, who never made malicious fun of his small stature. He was the only man in the world who he could trust, a man who understood him perfectly, a man who would never, no matter the circumstances, would ever think of betraying him by laughing at –

"BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!" Doc Louis let out roaring tidal wave of a laugh as he bent over and slapped his knees. "BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!" he roared again, his great sloping belly heaving along with his guffaws. Mac could only stare, speechless at the betrayal, while the rest of the crowd joined in the fun and laughed again; even the shaken Ness grinned visibly. Doc was at it for a full minute, leaning his entire body against the counter for support as he wiped the tears from his eyes. When he finally calmed down enough, he choked, "That – was the funniest – darndest – thing I've ever – heard –"

He caught sight of Little Mac and, not quite registering the horrified expression on his student's face, pointed at him and pffted, "Little Mac 'n' cheese!"

"That's it!" Little Mac screamed, the raging red back in full steam to his face as he stomped his way out from behind the counter. "That's it!" he bellowed again as he stomped to the exit of LittleMacDonalds. He turned around, addressing all the eyes that were now silently trained on him. He took a deep breath, and then shouted, "You just wait. You all just wait! Soon I'll be bigger than all of you – and none of you won't make fun of me no more for my height – no more –"

His eyes bulged like a madman as he spouted these final words of deranged impossibilities, before he turned back around and ran out of sight.

A heavy silence hung in the air for a full thirty seconds.

"Oh – oh man," Yoshi finally broke the silence with a croaky mutter. He wore a concerned, worried frown on his face as he cleared his throat and spoke, slightly louder, "maybe – maybe we went a bit too far…"

"I wouldn't worry about it," Doc Louis said cheerfully as he slapped a hand on Yoshi's shoulder. "Mac baby's got a bit of a temper, but he never lets it get the better of him in the end. You mark my words." He threw his crumpled chocolate wrapper into a waste bin and turned to Ness. "You got any more jokes, kid?" he asked keenly as he took out a pen and a notepad from his pockets. "Haven't laughed so hard since Glass Joe knocked himself out in the preliminaries!"

"Yeah – yeah, I got a couple more," Ness said, finally loosening up from the earlier trauma of Little Mac's near-assault. He looked up at the former boxer's earnest face, frowned, and continued, "uh. Well. What do you give Little Mac when he's misbehaving?"

Doc Louis mulled over the answer for a few seconds before answering, "A smack on the head?"

"Close. A Little Sm – Mac."

The entire restaurant rumbled with collective laughter once again as Doc Louis, struggling to breathe, screamed in delight and scurried his pen over the pages of his personal jokebook.