The Mii Fighter Chronicles
Chapter Nine: The Escape
Reggie and Erin took a step back as the entire construction site began to rumble. "What's going on?" Erin asked.
"I don't know." Reggie turned to Izzy, only to find that the stranger had vanished again. "Where did-"
Reggie didn't have time to finish his question as the towering structure before him began to collapse. One by one, the beams, ladders, and connectors came apart and fell to the ground, shimmering and vanishing into thin air just before they struck the concrete.
Erin and Reggie looked at each other. "Brawler!" Erin said. "And Mario!"
The two Miis ran for the barrier surrounding the structure. Reggie swung his sword in an attempt to strike at the barrier, only for the blade to pass right through. A pair of laser blasts from Erin's gun arm flew by his ear and struck some of the collapsing metal.
"The barrier's gone," Reggie said.
Erin nodded. "Come on," she said. She fired at the ground and launched herself into the air. Reggie followed suit, swiping with his sword to give himself altitude. The two miis jumped and flipped their way up the structure as it continued to fall around them. They made it up to the seventy-fifth meter mark to find Mario clinging to a ladder at the top of the structure with Brawler draped over his shoulder.
"Mario!" Reggie shouted. "Jump!"
Mario glanced down at the Miis below him and grasped even tighter to the metal bars in his hand. Brawler's head lolled on his shoulder, occasional groans and mumbles escaping from his mouth.
"Jump, Mario!" Reggie shouted again. The two miis jumped up a little further, trying to get up to them. Falling debris and the constant shaking of the structure hindered their progress.
Mario swallowed and took a deep breath, steadying himself on the platform. His hand let go of the ladder. Hoisting Brawler further onto his back, he stared at the rapidly approaching ground below. He closed his eyes and leaped from the structure.
Reggie and Erin stared as Mario's small legs launched him much higher into the air than they had before. Mario's jump reached a similar height as that of the amiibo's jumps, arcing in a wide loop through the air. The plumber opened his eyes in surprise.
"Yeah, Mario!" Reggie said.
"Reggie, we've got to get off of this now," Erin said.
"Huh? Oh, right."
Reggie and Erin jumped from the platforms, launching themselves into the air to join Mario in his fall. Just before hitting the ground, Reggie shouted at Mario, "Punch up into the air!"
"What?" Mario said, confused.
"Just do it," he said. "It'll slow your fall."
Reggie slashed upward with his sword, Erin fired downward, and Mario punched up into the sky. Together, the three pulled off their upward aerial moves and landed softly on the concrete below. Behind and all around them, the entire construction site collapsed and vanished into nothing, leaving behind only an unconscious red gorilla.
Mario stared blankly at the empty lot around him. He let Brawler slide off his back and onto Reggie's waiting arm.
"Mario?" Reggie said. "Are you alright?"
"Huh?" Mario said blankly. "Um, oh, yeah, I'll be fine. I'll, uh, see you around."
Without another word, the plumber sauntered away and didn't look back.
Brawler took a deep breath as the restorative powers of the Heart Container washed over him. Erin sat beside him, the deep purple bruises on her face clearing up like magic.
"Man," Brawler complained. "Our first mission and I end up the damsel-in-distress."
"Don't worry about it, buddy," Reggie said while he and Chibi-Robo worked feverishly on Erin's broken gamepad. "It happens to the best of us."
"I know," Brawler muttered. "But I thought I was gonna be the hero here. I mean, my name's always listed first on all the wiki pages and websites, I'm the most generic looking, and I'm wearing red. Does that not say 'hero' to you? If this were Power Rangers, things would have been different."
"Someone's having delusions of grandeur," Erin said.
Brawler scowled at her. Erin stuck her tongue out at him. He stuck out his tongue in response.
Brawler leaned back in his seat and sighed. "Anyway," he said. "Thanks for helping save me, guys."
Reggie glanced up from the gamepad. He smiled slightly. "You should be thanking Mario. He did most of the work."
"Well, yeah, thanks to him too. So," Brawler chewed his lip, unsure of what to say. "What happens now?"
Reggie shrugged. "We keep looking for amiibos, I guess."
"What about Mario?" Erin asked. "What will happen to him?"
"I don't know." Reggie walked over to the console nearby and picked up the Mario amiibo off of it. He held it up and studied it. "Chibi, have you found out anything new about how to restore the amiibo's data back to Mario himself?"
"Not a thing, boss," the tiny robot said, looking up from his work. "I'm still looking though."
Reggie sat down beside his fellow Miis on their cushioned seat, turning the statuette over in his hands. Erin sat up to get a better look at it.
"Toward the end there, it seemed like Mario was starting to remember a little, didn't it?" she asked.
"Seemed that way," Reggie replied.
"So, what does that mean if he's remembering stuff and his memory's all stored in there?" Brawler asked.
Reggie shook his head. He had no answers.
Something knocked on the outside hatch above them. The three miis looked up in unison.
"Who's that?" Brawler asked.
"I'm not sure," Reggie said. "Chibi?"
"On it, boss." The little robot plugged himself into the console, activating the outer security cameras. Mario stood outside their hatch in his gray coveralls with his toolbelt fixed around his waist.
"Mario?" Reggie said. He grabbed the ladder, climbed up, and opened the hatch.
Mario grinned and held up a wrench. "Here to start my repairs," he said.
"You-you came back?" Reggie asked.
"Of course," Mario said. "You guys are paying me to do a job, so I'm here to do it."
"Um, okay. Come on in."
Reggie climbed back down the ladder, Mario following. The plumber stepped down onto the steel deck of the submarine and glanced around the bridge. "Hey, you two," he said, nodding at Erin and Brawler. "Nice to see you-a up and about. You must have a really good doctor."
He looked past them to Chibi-Robo still hard at work on the gamepad. "Hey, Chibi," he said.
"Hi, Mr. Jumpman," the robot said in response.
Mario took a deep breath and looked around the room one more time. "Anyway, time to get to work."
Reggie stared at him. He held up the tiny amiibo in his hand. "So, you're not bothered by all of the-"
Mario looked at the tiny statuette with an indecipherable expression. Finally he shrugged. "The way I see it," he said, "something big is going on around here, something I'm probably not going to want to ignore. And as far as I can tell, you guys are the good guys in this situation. So, if there's anything I can do to help, I want to be around to do it."
The three Mii Fighters stared at Mario. Slowly, a smile crept across Reggie's face. "Well, then," he said. "Welcome aboard, Mario."