A/N: Okay, dudes and dudettes; it's time for me to do my legal spiel once again *glances over at attorneys holding guns to his head*:
I don't own Super Smash Brothers, Solid Snake or anybody mentioned in this story. If I owned SSB, Dr. Mario would be in Brawl. I'm still mad that Nintendo didn't put him in… I do however own the music of The Drunken Slurs, a nonexistent band I created in my mind two months ago (Two months ago being last June, seeing as how this chapter was completed in August of last year).
~Due to some purposeful misspellings, crackficish elements and Dean Koontzisms, reader discretion is advised.~
The sun stood at its highest point in the sky, gazing down upon an arid land of sand. A bundle of tumbleweed rolled down a desolate Arizona highway and then rolled backwards, jumped onto some guy's windshield and made him get into a car accident. An old man sat in front of a run-down gas station, playing a song on a resonator guitar that reflected the humid atmospheric conditions.
A large truck rolled down the road, carrying a bunch of barbeque supplies, cages full of squawking chickens, some guy named Felipe and a sleeping Solid Snake in its trailer. Snake had been happy to have fallen asleep; he was more than eager to forget why his life sucked so much and to spend at least a little while without having to think about those two awful movies the major had forced him to watch.
Suddenly, Snake's codec rang in his ears, startling the man from a dream he was having about a mission he went on in 1995. "AHHH!" he shouted. "THE TRUCK HAVE STARTED TO MOVE!" Filipe jumped up and ran behind a chicken cage, afraid that the operative was that wolf-man who had slaughtered his family's goats back in his village.
Snake put his hand to his ear and said groggily, "Why'd you have to wake me up, Major? I was back in the time of the Macarena, Wario wasn't president and the economy was a whole lot better than it is now."
"Well, I'm sorry to interrupt your good time," said Aholl sarcastically, "but my scanners show that you have arrived at Dr. Mario's Barbecue Compound."
"Mmm," said a pleasant female voice on the same frequency. "I could sure go for some barbecue right about now…"
"Who are you?" asked Snake.
"Oh, me?" said the woman. "I guess we were never properly introduced. I'm Dr. Kent, but you can call me Heli-Doctor."
"Oh, right," said the operative, realization hitting him like a drunken semi-driver. "You're that hot nurse who looks a lot like Jackie Kennedy who treated those cuts and that dog bite I got at Fox's house."
Heli-Doctor laughed, obviously flattered. "Oh, stop it."
"No, really," said Snake, chuckling; he was glad to actually be having some fun for once. "You're smokin' like Old Faithful. I've got to take you out for dinner sometime."
"Do you always talk to the ladies like this?" said Heli-Doctor in a playful voice.
"Doc, I can speak six languages, but the one I speak the best is the language of love."
Dr. Kent laughed more at the end of the line. Aholl cleared his throat, obviously embarrassed and feeling symptoms of Irritable Male Syndrome coming on him.
"If you two are done flirting," said an annoyed Aholl, "Snake has a mission that he needs to complete. I don't exactly cherish the thought of what will happen to us if we don't get Dr. Mario and The Drunken Slurs back to Washington in a couple of days…" The man shuddered. "I can't stand the thought of having to listen to that Willow Smith album again…"
Just then, a loud metallic screeching noise was heard as two burly, hairy dudes threw open the doors of the trailer. Sensing that danger was imminent, Snake used his incredible sneaking abilities to quickly dart into a shadowy corner. He stood there in silence as he watched the two men enter the trailer.
"I feel asleep!" said one of the men as he lifted up a case full of barbecue forks.
"Don't ya mean 'I feel sleepy'?" asked the second guy gruffly as he picked up a chicken cage and carried it outside.
"Oh, yeah," said the first guy, carrying the fork case out of the trailer. "I guess I was playing that old NES game for too long last night…"
Snake stood quietly in his corner, dozens of makeshift plans buzzing in his brain like flies on a pile of… uh, you know. Should he wait for the two to come back in? Should he lock them in the trailer? Should he throw a flashbang and make a run for it? So many questions, so little answers; it was just like an episode of Lost.
As he stood there debating his strategy in the metaphorical war room of his mind, one of the hairy guys waddled up the trailer's cargo ramp. At the top of the ramp, the muscle-bond man came to a sudden stop; he could see something from the corner of his eye in a very Dean Koontz-ish way.
An exclamation mark then appeared above Snake's head and a metaphorical alarm went off in his brain, signaling to him the already obvious fact that he had been spotted.
"Hey, Barry!" shouted the man. "There's some guy in here!"
That stupid exclamation mark kept reappearing over Snake's head and that alarm was ringing nonstop in his mind; it was enough to drive a man mad.
Then, Solid Snake snapped; in a momentous fit of rage, he grabbed the exclamation mark and used it to bludgeon the hairy guy into that blessed place between life, death and MTV. Within a moment, the second man appeared at the base of the ramp with a malevolent look on his face and a tire iron in his hand.
Tentatively stepping up the ramp, he called out in a voice that dripped of bravado, "Alright buddy, come on out and play. I won't hurt ya… too badly!" Chuckling, he entered the trailer, where he could see his friend passed out on the floor with a grievous head wound.
"What the…?"
He was greeted by a flash of light and Solid Snake's fist, which immediately sent him to a high school reunion with the steel floor of the trailer.
After ceremoniously dragging the two men's unconscious forms behind some miscellaneous barbecue supplies, Snake silently crept out of the trailer into the hot Arizonan sun. Felipe still cowered behind his chicken cage, praying that the crazy wolf-man who talked to himself and brutalized the other two men wouldn't find him.
Under the hot, late-afternoon sun, Dr. Mario stood behind a large kettle grill, where he was basting a rack of ribs with his special psychedelic barbecue sauce which was so hot that it would make you see the pits of hell itself.
The good doctor was standing in a wide, arid field. In the foreground behind him stood several hundred unmanned barbecues; each one was loaded with charcoal and was sending steady streams of smoke up into the ozone layer. However, they weren't cooking anything at all; the only reason they were going was because Dr. Mario liked to piss off the EPA and he had some weird fetish with fire and smoke.
Dr. Mario sighed happily as he gave the ribs his patented 'poke test' and put his stethoscope on them to check for doneness. Meeting Lucario up on that mountain had saved his life; after escaping from Kirby's stomach and seeing all of the unspeakable things he saw in there, he needed to find some avenue to escape from the terrors he witnessed.
And that avenue was grilling (Handfuls of prescription drugs helped as well). Grilling was the answer to all of life's problems. If those guys at the U.N. and in the Middle East started grilling stuff, all of humanity could finally find some common ground and there wouldn't be any need for bad stuff like war, terrorism or Christina Aguilera screwing up The Star-Spangled Banner.
Grilling was the key to inner peace and Dr. Mario was high priest of the Church of Grillentology. It was his goal in life to be the prophet of Grillentology, to spread the word of barbecue to a world obsessed with deep frying, twice-baking and… Whoa, that must be that cocktail of prescription drugs kicking in, thought Dr. Mario as he placed the ribs on a platter and carried them to a nearby counter he had set up.
"Let's see how we did," he said, grabbing a barbecue fork and a carving knife. He carved a piece off of the ribs and saw that it was just the way he liked it: raw, bloody and probably swarming with tapeworm larvae.
"Alright, guys!" he called to his film crew. "It's time to dig in!" Dr. Mario's film crew were suck-ups who felt the need to always be included in the final shot of each episode where they would eat the stuff that he had grilled. Dr. Mario didn't want to be bothered having to feature them, but after receiving some angry letters from the film crew's union and being hit repeatedly with a blunt instrument, he was more than willing to go along with their demands.
Dr. Mario was carving up the ribs and wondering why the film crew hadn't swarmed upon him like the vermin they were. But then, he had one of those Dean Koontz moments where he could see from the corner of his eye the gaffer, who was passed out in front of the white tents the good doctor forced his employees to sleep in while he slept in luxury in an air-conditioned shack nearby.
Dr. Mario looked around the set and could see that the entire crew was passed out for some reason. Was it heatstroke or something else of a preternatural nature? He got his answer when a gloved hand came over his mouth. In an incredible display of his mastery of Shaq Fu, the doctor bit down on the hand and broke free from his attacker's grasp.
Turning around, he could see that it was Solid Snake, who was now clutching his hand and cursing a blue streak. "Snake?" asked the doctor, bewildered. "What are you doing out here?"
Once he had gotten control of his pain and metaphorically washed his mouth out with soap, Snake said, "I've come to 'retrieve' you for Wario's barbecue party." When Snake said the word "retrieve", he made quotation marks with his fingers and rolled his eyes.
Doctor Mario's face grew angry; he put down his right foot, which was housed securely within the comfortable confines of a Rockport boot. For some reason, he started talking like they do in poorly-dubbed martial arts movies where the words don't match the guy's lips.
"I will not follow you to Washington, Solid Snake. Wario has dishonored me greatly by refusing to send me a Christmahanukkwanzaa card. What kind of person doesn't send you a card on a holiday, anyways? Someone who doesn't care, that's who! To barbecue at his party would bring great dishonor upon me. My master Lucario would be very ashamed if I did such a thing…"
Ten minutes later…
Dr. Mario was still ranting, but he was starting to run out of gas. "…You'll have to fight me if you want me to go… to Washington…"
"You know, Dr. Mario," said Snake, who was feeling just as worn out as Dr. Mario himself was, "if you ever get sick of the whole barbecue thing, I could call Kojima and get him to put you in the next Metal Gear game, 'cause you sure don't know how to shut up!"
"I'll keep it in mind…" said Dr. Mario, panting from exhaustion. "Now prepare to die!"
He pulled out a can of Red Bull and chugged the whole thing down. After standing in place for a minute, he looked at his back and groaned angrily. "Aw, for the love of… where are my wings?! That's it! I'm so suing for false advertisement!"
Feeling a sudden jolt of energy a moment later from the drink and some pep pills he had popped earlier, he whipped his stethoscope off of his neck, twirled it around like a pair of nunchuks and let out a bunch of karate screams. Snake prepared for the coming combat by positioning himself in some silly-sounding fighting stance that Master Miller had taught him years back.
But before the battle could begin, the sky suddenly became unnaturally black and the immediate area looked like it was on fire for no apparent reason. Snake and Dr. Mario started looking around because it was what bad guys want their unsuspecting victims to do before they deal that one fell swoop crap.
A horrible screaming sound rang throughout the field and then Tabuu, also known as that bald naked guy made of water with butterfly wings who likes to beat the living crap out of you in the Subspace Emissary, materialized in front of the two men.
Snake's eyes grew wide as he stared up at the monstrous being. Dr. Mario's face filled with terror; he threw a handful of pills into his mouth.
