Looking in the direction of the train, Mario tapped Luigi on the shoulder and ran. "C'mon, we can hurry to the next stop!" Running down the steps of the subway, the brothers advanced into the street and they reacted in sheer astonishment. Thrust in to the pulsing madness of this strange parallel of New York City that was not Yer York, they realized they were at it's hub. Staring up they saw a grotesque and twisted version of New York, as if it were stuck in the 90s and forgot to clean up. The place was ablaze with light and noise. The neon gas was blinking for rock'n'roll all over the place. The large crowd in front of them was swirling and shoving aggressively. Somewhere a woman was screaming and somewhere else two guys were screaming back. Atop the buildings, huge brightly animated billboards featured ads for cars and shoes. Suspended high over the streets was a wire mesh and sparks were constantly flying and raining down as kids tried to skateboard over it. The net was powering cabled cars below, whose telescoping rods were tipped with spring mounted tesla balls. They were battered beyond recognition and painted in Aboriginal war 's voice was a whisper as the two tried to take it all in.
"Where is this?"
"It's like New York but it isn't anything close to New York," explained Mario.
"Yeah, it's like New York on acid," suggested Luigi. Suddenly, the grid above flashed blue like an insect zapper just went off and two battered cars collided. The drivers reacted with indifference, as if they were driving bumper cars at Coney Island and just drove on. As they walked on in astonishment, the boys passed two hookers, one ho grabbed Mario by the shoulder and held him back.
"Hey boys," she approached them. "Wanna step on scales... get flayed?"
"Excuse me?" Mario asked.
"C'mon," she teased. "Read my hips."
"Move it, we're looking for a lady," Luigi said, trying to get her out of the way.
"Well roleplaying, huh? I can do that," she suggested.
"I said a lady," Luigi repeated.
"What're you a bunch of herbivores?" she taunted and moved back, letting the brothers they were clear, Luigi asked the question: "Where are we?"
"I don't know!" Mario stressed. "The Manhattan of the future, maybe that was an inter-dimensional wormhole that took us through another realm and then back to our world but in the future. Or maybe it did the opposite and took us the Bronx of '93! No wonder dad told me to never go there... or maybe, it's a parallel dimension. Y'know, sharing the same space as ours but unreachable unless we vibrate at the right frequency. That rock was vibrating, maybe it sent us to this dimension!"
"Where the hell did you learn physics?""Discovery channel," Mario answered.
Before he could explain his theory further by adding in the DC Comics Multiverse, the saw an old lady attempt to approach them. She wore a knitted cap and a long skirt, looking like a street person. However, she was friendly enough to greet the brothers."You boys from out of town?" she asked.
"Yeah, we're from uhh, not here, we're from east," Luigi awkwardly answered.
"So your from Toadsworth's land?" she frowned. "It's dangerous here, are you boys armed?"
"Not exactly, no." Luigi said quickly.
"Good," her mug went serious and she pulled out a stun stick, not dissimilar to the one Iggy had. "Give me all of your money, NOW!" Moving blindingly fast, she frisked the boys wallets. Mario tried to resist and was stung, falling to the ground as if he were hit by a cattle prod. The old lady looked at the dollar bills in their wallets and threw them back down at the two. "What the hell are these?" she asked. "I don't need paper I need gold koopons!"
"What the hell?" Mario asked. "That's almost two hundred in both of our wallets!" Then she turned the dial on her stun stick, both Mario and Luigi could tell whatever that meant, it was not good... but they heard the police sirens horned and sighed in relief as the old lady turned around, trying to look dazed and confused. It did not work on the cops, whose cars were not attached to the grid and were black, as was their uniform. It was there that Mario saw the logo on their cars, DPD, what the hell did that mean? The lady began to run for it, but it took a bullet to the knee to knock her out. Somehow, though, as if her bones were more dense than normal, she was able to keep running until she was tasered down. "Thanks officer," Mario thanked, approaching a cop.
"You boys compies or something?" asked the officer. "Getting taken down by a turnstile jumper, a hadrosaur at that!"
"We didn't know what she was!" Luigi remarked, wondering why the hell the cop called her a dinosaur. "We thought she was just some old lady." The cop's face furrowed upon hearing that.
"Let me see some face-fit."
Figuring he meant ID, Mario took out his drivers license.
"What the hell is this?" the cop asked.
"My drivers license," Mario answered.
"Y'ever hear of a drivers license?" the cop asked his partner. "Log'em!"
"On what charge?" Luigi protested.
"Failure," the cop answered, "to offer a bribe." He threw the two in the back of the car and moved on. The cop car sped down a ramp into the bowels of a building whose neon light flicked the signs: "Dinohattan Police Precinct - Metro Division.01". Inside the car, Mario and Luigi were panicking, much to the officer's chagrin, who thought they had too many magic mushrooms, and were watching in fright as the car seemed to be speeding up towards a brick wall. Before it could hit, the car was attached to arrester hooks, which seemed to be akin to what held fighter planes up on an aircraft carrier. Escorted out, Mario was astonished at what he saw. As a young guy, about Luigi's age, he was a hoodlum, a goon. It was what got him with guys like Eddie and dating Pauline in the first place. He had seen the back of a precinct many times... but this place? It was much more hellish than any New York precinct, even in Hells Kitchen, than Mario had ever been bailed out of. There was noise and chaos everywhere, Mario flinched as he saw cop execute a secretary and people just walk over her body as if it was an everyday routine. Luigi had never been a "goon" and so this chaos and shock was all new to him, if he ever went to an actual New York precinct he would probably be pleased. There was also a lot of noise coming from the other side of the room, which seemed to be a pound for crunched cars. The one they saw get snatched was being unloaded onto a pile of other vehicles. An attendant spray painted something onto a windshield.
"See what you got us into?" Mario asked Luigi. He knew he did not mean anything of what he said, he wanted to find Daisy as well but he was angry and needed to take out his frustration n somebody. "You knew nothing about that girl other than the fact that you owed her boss money when it should've been the other way around. You had to go chasing after, looking at old bones and prehistoric mesozoic history? That stuff is passed! You never pay attention to the here and now! When we're working, you look somewhere else! When your working, your concentrated so long as your trapped in a box where the only thing you can see is a valve!" Mario pulled out his wallet which had a picture of their entire family, Mario pointed to a picture of their father. "Do you know how disappointed he would be in you right now?" Luigi just glared at Mario.
"You talk of your ideals and your morals," Luigi stated. "You don't know where we are and that's when you draw the line. Talk so big of what you value, but I've never seen you follow principle once!" Mario wanted to hit his brother and was prepared to do so, the cops sensed it as well and cuffed the two before a fight could break out. Shoved into separate lines, the two brothers continued to stare at each other with growing anger. As they entered stalls, they tore off numbers from a dispenser and then sat on a metal bench riveted to the floor. It they could not find one or sit on somebody's lap, they would have to sit on the fungal grated floor. Booking officers sat at separate wire mesh windows blocked by a stall wall which had two revolving turntables in which prisoners would turn over their belongings. The brothers ended up side by side in separate lines, Luigi had stopped looking at Mario and was thinking back to how it all started. Mario kept looking at him with anger. "Do I got something on my face?" Luigi angrily asked. "What where you doing at the tunnel?"
"What?" Mario questioned. "Out of everything you ask me, first you question my ideals and now you go left hand?"
"I know how far back you and Eddie go Mario," Luigi stated. "What were you doing in the tunnel."
"I was saving your ass Luigi!" Mario roared. "But given the situation we're in, it doesn't seem like you really want saving now does it?"
The guard signaled for Mario to turn over his workbelt. Clipping it off, Mario placed it on the turntable. "That workbench you just put there? You had that on you. How could that save my ass, huh? And what about the place flooding all of the sudden? Maybe you took some grade A tools, started the pressure but blocked it off. I have a feeling perhaps that caused an enormous building from excess coming out the East River with it's traffic diverted it needed to go somewhere. Think I don't know nothing about the business now, Mario?"
"Take care of my tools, their grade A - my livelihood," Mario told the officer while looking at Luigi. "I had a gun held to my head, Luigi. You would've done the same, oh, no wait... you would've taken the bullet for Daisy and left me, Pauline and all to rot. You know how Romeo ended up, or did you not take English 11?" Luigi looked at him angrily and stepped to the next window and emptied his pockets. He put down a watch, a wallet, a St. Christopehrs Medallion and due to his reluctance to take out the next item, a hefty female officer grabbed it from him. It was Daisy's crystal. On her name tag it said Corporal Red Bertha. Much to her name, Bertha was wearing a red uniform. Grabbing the crystal, she put it on and turned a sister officer.
"Whadda ya think?" she asked.
"I want a receipt for that," Luigi claimed, he was intent on keeping the cyrstal. She laughed out loud, there was a fat chance he was getting that back. An officer whacked the two brothers in the back with a night stick and sent them back into the herd with the other prisoners. He also took off their cuffs, guessing correctly that the anger that the brothers had towards each other had to have subsided by then. They made their way to another officer who was wearing a football jacket somehow, on his tag it said Sergeant Chuck.
"Names!" he demanded, like Luigi's high school football coach.
"Mario Segale."
"Luigi Segale."
"Bail is fixed at five hundred koopons," declared Chuck.
"What do you mean like grocery coupons?" asked Mario. The wisecrack got him another whack by the nightstick. The prisoners went back in line, Luigi behind Mario.
"You know what your problem is Mario?" Luigi asked. "You don't care about anyone."
"No I know what my problem is," Mario fired back. "It's that I do care. You see if I didn't care about anyone I wouldn't have followed your ass down here and I would've pulled you out. I promised pop I would care for my little brother, who couldn't even be born on time and was still crapping in his diapers when I had to start working. Maybe if I had a sibling my age who I didn't ever have to look forward to, I could've gone to college I could've gone beyond plumber. But I didn't, because that was all you were supposed to do! Guess, what you failed! But you know what's worse, it was my job to make sure you wouldn't fail so tell me, whose the bigger loser. The loser or the idiot whow as supposed to make the loser win?" Luigi looked at him once, but not again. As they made their way forward Mario and Luigi were both visibly shocked to see two Jurassic Park velociraptor like creatures standing up front, with humanlike fingers and no tail wearing military armour approach them. "What the hell are those?" Mario asked the old lag in front of him.
"Goombas," the answer came back. Before Mario could ask further, both he and Luigi were grabbed and had a gas mask shoved onto their face and were thrown away then.
"What the hell was that?" Mario asked the old lag again, ripping off the gas mask.
"De-fungus, this your first time in here?" asked the old lag. Another goomba threw down a switch and the three were drenched in a spray of yellow gas. Recoiling at the smell, the brothers began coughing and retching and stumbled into the next room. Prodded forward, Luigi looked at the huge pneumatic drying machines, but they were out of order, leaving all three wet. Taken by two more goombas, the brothers were shackled against a wall and looked at the black wall in front of them. Then they saw the red dot move up their chests and to their forehead. Were they at a rifle range? The dot clicked and their mugshots were taken, destroying their fears that they were going to be executed.