Chapter 3
"Look at this place, it's pathetic! It gets worse every day! Meanwhile the humans have a world that is full of resources. Can you imagine? An endless supply of food, water, clean air! It's like a juicy prime piece of meat just begging to be swallowed! And what are we stuck with? A pit hole that infested with germs, fungus, and is falling apart. Ever since the meteorite struck sixty-five million years ago, we've been exiled to this dump while in the other dimension the mammals thrive!" griped Koopa in his suite to his mistress, Lena.
"It won't be this way for much longer, though. Once you have the stone everything will change," Lena purred as she sidled up to Koopa. She was an attractive woman somewhere in her thirties with lustrous dark red hair and reptilian golden brown eyes.
Koopa was a tall imposing figure, currently wearing a dark green reptile skin warlord's robe. He had very pale green skin, a long face, slicked back bright fire orange hair and fierce ruby red eyes. His penthouse suite in Koopa tower was vast, with marble floors, a spacious bed, a sunken pit with a bar, and a large sleek desk with a computer and vid-com console. Behind the desk were towering crystalline windows that offered a sweeping view of the city below.
"Yes, once I have the rock and the princess, we'll be able to decide out own fate!" he declared, the thought bringing a smile to his face.
"Princess?" Lena questioned, jealousy flashing briefly across her face.
"Yes, once I have both I'll be able to merge the dimensions and destroy the mammals!"
"It's everything you've been working for the past twenty-one years! Your patience is finally about to pay off, you brilliant savage!" praised Lena.
A buzzing came from the doorway and Koopa pressed a button on his computer, bringing up a picture of Larry and Roy who were standing outside his door. Another press of a button and the door opened, admitting the two.
"Cousin!" exclaimed Roy as they approached the desk. "We return with the princess!"
"Are you sure? The last seven times you've failed to bring back the right girl!" hissed Koopa, his eyes narrowing.
"Yes, we are sure! We have succeeded this time, cousin!" Larry professed as he handed a sheet of paper to Koopa. "See for yourself!"
Koopa snatched the sheet away and glanced over it before a large grin spread across his face. "Yes, you are right! The brain scan confirms it! She's the princess! You have done well, this time. I shall not forget this."
Larry and Roy looked elated as they congratulated themselves, giddy with excitement and anticipation.
"Soon a whole new world will be mine," Koopa continued, "and you tow shall be at my side, rich and powerful! It's going to be great! Now, where is the rock?"
The excitement melted from Larry's and Roy's faces and they looked at Koopa blankly.
"Rock... sir?" repeated Larry.
"Yes, the rock, the meteorite fragment I need to merge the dimensions. You do have it, don't you?" his voice took on a dangerous edge.
Larry and Roy shrunk back from Koopa a bit before shaking their heads.
"Then where is it?" demanded Koopa as he rose from his chair, anger burning in his eyes.
The two unfortunate goons before him look at each other, trying to figure out what happened to the shard.
"The plumbers took it," they both say simultaneously.
"Plumbers?"
"Yes, plumbers! They saw us abduct the girl and must have followed us!" Roy stated.
"Yes, that is right! We struggled to bring the girl back through the portal! The plumbers have grabbed the rock before we pulled her through! They must be somewhere out there in the city!"
"You were followed?" roared Koopa, pulling himself up to his full height.
"It could not be helped, cousin! It was either grab the girl then or lose her! If she hadn't struggled so much, those plumbers would never have found the portal!" the air claimed.
"But they did find it, they now have the stone and I can't merge the worlds! Get out of my sight! Both of you!"
Larry and Roy stumbled backwards and continued to trip over themselves as they left the suite as quickly as they could.
Daisy was unceremoniously shoved into a room that looked like it was cross between a dungeon and a dormitory and the door slammed shut harshly. Inside there were already seven other women who were either playing cards or reading magazines. They all looked bored.
"Hi... I'm Daisy," she said weakly.
A dark haired woman got up and approached Daisy, giving off the impression that she was in charge. She was lithe, looked tough, and dressed in black. "Pauline. Is anyone doing anything to get us out of here?"
"Actually, no one even knows we're here."
Everyone groaned and Pauline's face seemed to fall a bit. "Well thanks for that ray of sunshine, Daisy."
"It could be worse. At least you're all still alive."
"Are you kidding? Look at my hair and my nails! The food here is repulsive, all we have to drink is tap water, and no one has any cigarettes."
"I feel for you, really."
"It won't matter anyway, especially once my brother finds us."
"Why, who's your brother?"
"Luca Santini, that's who. Mark my words, when he gets us out of here these creeps will wish they stayed the hell out of Brooklyn."
The back of the police car was scratched and torn up as though it had been used to transport wild animals. At the moment it contained Mario, Luigi, and a wiry homeless looking individual who Mario ignored as he tried to talk to the cops.
"Listen, we know who's been kidnapping all of those girls in Brooklyn. If you'd listen we can take you right too them!"
"Wait a minute, did you say Brooklyn?"
The two officers looked at each other and one of them reached for the radio.
"We've got a possible 1658 here, some guy who says he's from 'Brooklyn.'"
"I've heard of Brooklyn," said the other person in the back. "But that's a mythological place."
"Not to us it isn't!" said Luigi. "But if this isn't Brooklyn what is it?"
"Well, this whole place, if it can be called a place, is a sub-dimension. The real dimension is all around us but we can't get to it because we're sub-dimensional. Always have been since the meteorite struck and exiled us all here. That's why everything here's so out of whack with fungus and a corrupt system. At least, that's my theory any way."
"You mean that there's your world and our world and somehow we've crossed over?"
"Might be. Like I said, that's my theory."
"Who are you?"
"Name's Toad. I live in the desert and come in to scavenge and this time they busted my ass. I try to avoid the city as much as possible. I'm an herbivore, see, part chameleon."
"I'm Luigi and this is my brother, Mario."
The cop car sped down a ramp that lead into the parking levels underneath a building whose flickering sign identified it as the Metro Division Police HQ. Mario and Luigi both panicked as the car showed no signs of stopping and was hurtling towards a solid wall. At the last second the vehicle is jerked to a stop by arrester hooks that connected to the rear, like fighter planes on an aircraft carrier.
"All right, out," one of the cops ordered.
Everyone got out in a bit of a daze and were quickly hauled into the station and brought before an officious looking desk clerk, Toad first.
"Name?" the clerk whose name tag identified him as Walter asked, clearly bored.
"Toad."
"Put any personal possession on the turntable and they'll be returned to you at the end of your incarceration, assuming you survive. Take him away," Walter said in the same droning monotone voice.
Mario and Luigi were pushed up next, about to go through the same routine when the doors to the station flew open and several officers wrestled in the gang that had tried to rob the brothers at the payphone earlier. They were shoved up to another desk and their confiscated possessions were put in the turntable. On the other side of the desk a broad shouldered busty cop who looked like she would have done well in women's pro wrestling picked out Daisy's crystal pendant on its broken cord and wrapped it around her neck.
"Hey, that's mine!" Luigi exclaimed. "They stole that from me, I want it back!"
"Shut your trap!" one of the officers snapped and prodded him with a stun rod.
"Name," the desk clerk processing the brothers asked, still in the dull voice.
"Mario."
"Last name?"
"Mario."
Walter only glanced at Mario briefly before writing 'Mario Mario' down on the form.
"Name?" he asked Luigi.
"Luigi Mario."
"Please put any personal items on the turntable. They will be returned to you at the end of your incarceration assuming you survive."
The brothers placed their tool belts on the turntable along with their wallets, watches, and a St. Christopher medallion from Luigi. They were then whacked on the back with a night stick by the two officers that arrested them and herded further into the station. As they were put into another line both of them recoil at the sight of tall things with small reptilian heads.
"What are those things?" asked Mario.
Toad, who was in the line ahead of them answered. "They're Goombas, people that Koopa's had de-evolved."
Before either brother could ask any more questions, Goombas wearing gasmasks approached them and gave them a burst of powder.
"What's going on here?" sputtered Mario.
"It's the de-fungus," Toad answered again. "The stuff is everywhere, choking the city. It takes all the water, it's awful."
A Goomba threw a switch and jets sprayed the party of three with chemicals which Mario and Luigi were repulsed by because of the smell. Next they were herded into a room with large drying machines that were out of order and so they were hustled on to the next stage of processing and chained to a wall with metal plaques placed around their necks. From behind a screen in front of them, two menacing looking guns were aimed at Mario and Luigi. Officers adjusted the height and angle so that red dots were squarely on the brother's foreheads.
"Oh no, no, don't!" they both started protesting, believing that they'd bought it now.
The officers pulled the triggers bus instead of the sound of gun fire there was a bright flash and mug shots were pushed out of a slot not next to the 'guns.'
"Are we dead yet?" Mario asked.
Koopa was pacing back and forth in his suite, fuming about the turn of events. His dimwitted cousins had successfully brought back the right girl this time but had lost the meteorite fragment he needed to complete his plans. In addition to that, the nimrods had been seen abducting the princess and now there were aliens out there wandering the streets of the city. Koopa was formulating a plan to find the plumbers and the rock when fate intervened and delivered them right to him when the vid-com unit on his desk started buzzing.
"What is it?" he growled as he answered the call.
"Sir, it's Simon from police dispatch. You asked to be alerted of any 1658s and we just got one so I am. Its two guys who say they're from Brooklyn. Plumbers by the look of it."
The mug shots of Mario and Luigi appeared on Koopa's monitor.
"Did you say plumbers?"
Mario and Luigi sat disconsolately in a claustrophobic wire cage in the police station cell area. The 'cells' were stacked one on top of the other and forklift trucks were used to remove and replace the cages.
"You know, Mario, there are a lot of unexplained phenomena in the world. UFOs, out of body experiences, supernatural phenomena..." said Luigi.
"I don't believe in any of that stuff," Mario grumbled.
"That's because you have a very closed mind. I mean, look around you! This is obviously not New York! Is it so hard to believe that Toad might have been right?"
"You know, you're right. Maybe Elvis is in the same joint. Hey, King! Give us a few bars of Jailhouse Rock!" he called out.
"OK, where do you think we are, then?"
Mario couldn't answer the question and settled for looking grumpy.
"I can guarantee you now that that my theory is more than a theory now, especially if you really are from Brooklyn," said a voice above them.
The brothers looked up and saw that Toad had been placed in the cell above them.
"Toad!" Luigi grinned.
"Oh great, now there's two of them," Mario groaned as he leaned back against the cage only to feel something tickling his neck. "What the – it's that fungus again! This place is falling apart! Was it always like this?"
"Nah, it wasn't. Sure, we've been using up our limited resources but things really started going downhill after Koopa took over twenty-one years ago. That's when the fungus first showed up as well. I think that the fungus is our old king who Koopa de-evolved. Now he's getting his revenge on Koopa by infesting the city and slowly choking the life out of it. At least, that's my theory."
"Right... theory," Mario repeated and made the universal sign for raving loony.
A guard, Simon, walked down the metal walkway into the cell area and called up at the stacks. "Mario brothers!"
"That's us!" exclaimed Mario as he shot to his feet. "We want a lawyer to get us out of this chicken coop!"
"You got one."
The two plumbers were escorted down a hallway to a rectangular room that had a table and chairs in it which were bolted to the floor. A person rose from the chair on the other side of the desk greet them, flashing the smile of a career politician or successful used car salesman.
"Hi, come in and sit down. I'm Lazard of Lazard, Conda, and Dactyl," he greeted and handed both of them a business card. He was tall and a striking figure with pale green skin and fire orange hair sculpted like ridges on his head.
"Who sent you? The city?" asked Mario.
"No, I'm from the little place in all of us that can't stand to see anyone in need or in pain."
"Hey, who's in charge here? Who's the head honcho?" Luigi asked.
"You mean El Supremo? The main man? That would be President Koopa."
"We want to see him," requested Mario.
"Actually, I don't think you do," 'Lazard' said and checked the walls before lowering his voice. "Koopa is one evil, mean egg snatching son-of-a-snake. Trust me on this. Now, I need to ask you a few questions. Procedure, you understand. As I understand it the reason you're here is because you were following a young woman, correct?"
"Yeah, that's right," Mario confirmed. "Her name is Daisy."
"What's her age?"
"We don't know, never asked. Around twenty, I'd say," Luigi answered.
"Parents?" asked 'Lazard,' his voice becoming silky.
"She's an orphan. Said she was left at a convent."
"Alright, just one more question for now. Where's the meteorite fragment?"
"The what?" asked Luigi, looking blankly at the 'lawyer.'
'Lazard' lunged across the table and grabbed Luigi by the neck, hissing, "You know what I'm talking about! Where is the rock?"
"Hey, let go of my brother!" Mario demanded and attempted to remove 'Lazard's' hands only to be knocked in the knees by Simon.
"Nobody touches President Koopa!"
"What? You're Koopa?" Luigi questioned, rubbing his neck. "But you said that he was..."
"An evil, mean egg snatching son-of-a-snake," finished Koopa with a grin. "Did I lie? Simon, take them to the Devo Chamber. Something tells me that these plumbers know more than they're letting on."
A/N: Another day, another chapter. What will happen to the Mario Bros. in the Devo Chamber? Will they escape? Actually, you probably already know the answer to that. As always, reviews are needed for this piece. If you have any ideas for the plot, I'd love to hear them so put them in a review or PM them. Keep on writing.
Knight Writer 95