Stars.
Hundreds of white dots lighting up the immense black before him. The more he looked, the more stars seemed to pop out from the darkness. It wasn't the light that was so awe-inspiring to him. Brooklyn was lit up every day of the year once the sun went down. No... it was about staring up at this infinite chasm, a peek at a universe so much bigger than anyone could ever understand or explore. And just, taking it all in...
Then he felt the cold as it settled all around him.
Mario sat up. Wait...where..where am I?
He looked around his body. Snow. Snow was caking his entire body. Shit. He quickly knocked it off before pausing again. The Bit. Where's the Bit?
His hands scoured the snow. No, nonononono can't lose that. Can't lose... His thumb brushed up against a hard surface in the snow. Mario's hand was on it instantly; sure enough, it was the Bit. Ambient as ever.
Whew. He let out a sigh of relief. Now, what's ne-Pauline. Where's Pauline?!
A meager sound stirred from the pile of snow next to him. Oh good. Pauline. So she made it with me after all. Thank fuck.
He picked her out of the snow and put his fingers to her neck. Her breathing was steady. She coughed a while before sprawling back into the snow. "Uuuuughhh...I think I'm gonna puke."
"Puke all you want." He gave her a wry grin. "It's all over now." He looked about his surroundings. The construction site was...eerily close. A gigantic bonfire tearing through the midnight. He could still smell smoke from this distance.
"So does that mean the gorilla is gone then?"
That's a good question. He rose to his feet. "Hang on. I'll be right back."
"M-Mario?" Pauline stretched her hand out as he turned his back to her. "Where are you going?"
"I gotta make sure this is done and over with."
"Mario, what are you going to do? Mario? Mario!"
The heaps of metal sticking out of the snow were strewn all around the area. Mario more than once felt the impact of iron and steel buried in snow bang against his shoes and tear little rips into the soles
It didn't matter.
The top level of the building had completely imploded, and no doubt the third level wasn't far behind.
That didn't matter either.
Only one question was locked in his mind.
Where the hell is that damn gorilla?
He didn't have to look far. Buried under several girders laid the gorilla. A massive goose egg knot took up half his head. Blood ran down his fur in several places. Patches of fur had been made black and charred. Whatever strength it had left was being spent wearily trying to wiggle its way out under the girders. At the sight of Mario, it desperately began trying to move its arms, but the slightest movement of its upper arms seethe in pain. The ape looked right at its arms in stunned shock as his body simply wasn't cooperating.
"Yep. You came down the hard way. Good." Mario just...looked at it. How is this thing even still alive? I know it's supposed to be big and bad but...how high up were we? The first level was about 25 meters. Four levels...100 meters or so? How high up is that? Gotta be a pretty insane fall, right? I know I wouldn't come close to surviving it. And it fell around all these beams and girders, landing on them, they buried this thing...and it's still fucking breathing? Does terminal velocity not apply to you?
"Are you gonna kill it?"
Mario turned around. Pauline was walking towards him, wiping away the snow at her feet and tiptoeing around shards of metal.
"I told you to stay back. This isn't over yet?"
"Well 1: I was freezing and needed to move. And 2, I say we just bail outta here while we can."
"We can't just leave loose ends tied up." He started looking around. "When I do a job, gotta do it right, ya know? We gotta put this thing... we gotta put it... put it..."
"Down?"
He looked back at her. "You don't think I should kill it? Why not? That thing took you up like, how many fucking feet?! It tried to kill us twenty times over!"
"It never really wanted us. It just wanted that Bit...thing."
"Certainly didn't mind having to tear us to shreds to get it! Besides, the fact that it's alive just shows how dangerous it is!" He picked up a metal bar next to his foot.
"I just don't like killing alright! I don't like seeing things die! And it just looks so..weak. It's done, Mario. Let it go. You don't need to do this. It can't defend itself."
"AND WHY SHOULD THAT MATTER TO ME, HUH?!" He looked right at her, the metal clenched firmly in his hand.
"Mario..."
"Wario, Waluigi, they couldn't defend themselves. Ya still think I wasn't gonna fuckin shoot em right in the fuckin street?" The metal bar was being crunched in under his grip.
"Mario..."
"You know Pauline, there's something I been wanting to ask you for a while now. If those cops hadn't fuckin been there to get me, you think I woulda killed the Wario Bros? Be honest. You think I woulda done it?"
Her eyes went wide for a second. She opened her mouth to speak.
The words didn't come out to follow.
She broke eye contact with him, first putting her eyes to the ground between them, then looking off into the distance. She couldn't stop moving her hands and her arms.
Her reaction made him take the edge off. She wasn't expecting that, not in the slightest. Several gut reactions at once stopped her from giving the immediate answer. And as the pause grew and grew, Mario was no longer feeling testy; he wanted to know what she thought of him.
He stood there in silence. She could have spent eternity figuring out her answer, and it wouldn't have bothered him one bit.
Slowly, she turned back to him, eyes watery. "Honest?" Her voice, so soft and somber. The energy was gone. Just recollecting the day, experiencing everything, living it over second by second, was exhausting.
He knew. He had done it quite a few times when no one else was looking.
"Honest."
"I think...if Luigi died, you wouldn't have hesitated. You would right in, shot em both, and let them bleed out in front of you."
Mario didn't respond.
"But, you didn't. You fought with them first. Threw them through a cheap-ass window. If the cops weren't there...I think you would have shot 'em, but don't think you woulda killed them. At least, not with one shot each."
"What makes you say that?"
"I think you just wanted to see them suffer. At least a little bit."
"Yeah..." He leaned his head to the side and nodded it. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense."
"So, I gotta ask Mario, what would have done?"
"Honest?" He looked back up at her.
"Honest."
"I don't know."
He looked away, and the expression on his face momentarily became scrunched in thought before going back into a blank, exhausted state.
"I...I just don't know?"
"You don't know, and you decide to ask me?"
"I don't know, so I decided to ask you. I'll...I'll take your word how things were gonna go down. But, that was then..." He turned back to the gorilla.
"This is now."
"Mario..."
He took a step forward. The metal bear still in hand. "Gettin real tired of being fucked over by everybody. Getting real tired of not being able to keep the people I care about outta harm's way. So what, now I'm in some kind of game now? The hell's up with that?" Mario stopped to stare at the gorilla for a few seconds.
"No...no you don't know shit about that, do ya? I can tell just by looking at you you don't know what I'm talking about. I can sense it. I don't know if it's this Bit or just my intuition, but I think you're even more clueless than I am about what's going on."
Another step.
"Seems like times are-a changing for me. Maybe I need to change with 'em. So maybe taking this solid steel bar and bashing your skull in with it is just the thing I need to do."
"MARIO!" Pauline reached out her hand. "THINK ABOUT THIS! DON'T DO IT!"
"It didn't let us go when it had the chance!" He called back to her. "Ain't no different than swatting a fly with a newspaper. Just a little bigger, is all."
He took a practice swing with it. Nice and weighty. Might not brain the gorilla first try, but he had plenty of time. And plenty of bars around here in case this one broke. "Maybe this'll help me be in a better place to deal with fuckwits like you before too much shit goes down."
Mario looked the gorilla dead in the eyes as he brought the bar over his head. It didn't even try to move, it's expression gone completely blank.
Mario
He let the bar slip out of his hands and drop into the snow.
His shoulders dropped to his sides as he closed his eyes and his head went skyward.
Silence.
A long, exasperated sigh came out of his mouth. "Fuck. Me."
He held his fist out to the side. The air started swirling as the began to bend. "Pauline, stay back. I mean it."
Walking around the gorilla's body, Mario put a hand on one of the girders trapping it. "Make one move towards her and I'll leave you here. I'm sure the fire would love a little more fuel."
He lifted the girders off the gorilla with ease. "I'm letting you live, because my girlfriend asked me too. I never wanna see you ever again." He pointed at the portal. "There's your ticket home. Fuck off."
The gorilla looked at him. He nodded.
Mario stared back.
Pushing off of his knees and chest, the gorilla slowly shuffled his way into the portal. Only as its back leg went through the other side did Mario close it and look away. "I hope that doesn't come back to bite me in the-"
Pauline wrapped her arms around Mario, hugging him as tight as she possibly could. "I love you more than you can possibly understand. You're a good person. Even if you don't believe it." A tear ran down her face.
"Woulda killed it, you know." He turned away from her, opting not to look her in the eye when she said it. "Woulda enjoyed it too."
"I know." She gave him a pat on the back. "I'd rather not have heard you say that, but I know."
"Figured I oughta be honest." He could feel himself starting to choke up. Not yet. One last thing he needed to say.
"Hey Pauline,"
"Yeah?"
"Am-am I a bad person?" He looked at the ground. Tears fell from his face, dotting the white snow."
"No. No. Nonononononono."
"Isn't threatin to kill people and liking it sorta a bad thing?"
"Well, yeah but..." She sighed. "Everyone has their limits Mario, and we're both well past ours right now, to be honest. And when that happens...people do what they feel is right, rather than what they know is right. Whatever it takes to get the edge off. This isn't who you are all the time, so stop lying to yourself. You don't kill people. You're a wonderful person. And I'll love you forever."
"T-Thanks."
"Whenever we're on edge, we just need the people around us to help us out. Talk us down. That's what I did for you. I'd hope you'd do the same for me."
"I don't know if I could, but I'll certainly put that in my back pocket, maybe someday try that on someone else. Oh wait that's right." he reached into the pockets of his overalls and pulled out her purse. "Here's your purse, all the stuff I could find, anyway."
"Oh sweet, I wonder if my umbrella still works." Pauline grabbed her umbrella, opened and closed it, and after her satisfaction of seeing it still in operation, proceeded to bring it down right on Mario's head.
"OW!" Mario instinctively grabbed his head before remembering to use the Bit. "Why would you do that?!"
"That's for almost getting me killed, and getting yourself killed too!" She whacked him again with it "I told you over and over and over again to leave it all alone. And guess what?! You didn't! That thing set up trap after trap after trap for you and you just walked into them all!"
"It was intimidation! By taking everything it had to throw at me, I claimed dominance!"
"You claim idiocy! Next time just move! Christ, I can't believe how much shit it put us through."
Mario blinked. "Us?"
"Oh, don't you-"
"I'm just saying I don't know if you were set on fire, but I certainly was."
"I was the thing's hostage! I helped you out where I could."
Ain't my hill to die on. Mario shrugged. "Fair enough. But yeah...when you really think about it, that ape was just didn't know when to quit! It always seemed to have a trick up its sleeve. I wouldn't have thought to use half the shit he did."
"Yeah the ape...gorilla...it...he..." Pauline facepalmed. "I feel like we should just establish a name. For the record."
Mario threw his hands up in the air. "Now here come's the naming part! Oh boy. I knew this was gonna happen! Dead things don't need names!"
"Come on Mario! Like, imagine you had to tell this as a story. What would you do, just keep saying 'ape' and 'gorilla' forever? That would get annoying real quick, don't ya think? And this is probably gonna be a pretty long story."
"Okay then. Guess you're right What would you call it?"
"I don't know. Uhhhhh..." Pauline racked her brain. "There's gotta be a good one out there somewhere, how about...uh...
"Donkey Kong."
"Wha?" Pauline gave him a weird look."Why Donkey Kong?"
"Cause this gorilla's a fucking ass."
"Oh my God." Pauline doubled over laughing. "I should have fucking known...ahahahahaaa.. I shoulda known where you were going with that..."
"You like it?"
"I love it." She wiped another tear from her eye. "Donkey Kong it is. You know this is starting to remind of that one time my parents' top lawyer, John Kirby, once did a case where this guy's gorilla broke out of his cage into the public domain, managed to walk away with a win. I wonder how all this would shake down in court."
"I don't. Because that tells me it's time to go if we got time to talk about public domain." Mario looked at the Bit. "Lucky we got you to just make a few portals for us.
"Well that and, the fuckton of cops, trucks, and helicopters that are bound to be on their way with a fire this big and-OH FUCK!" Pauline put her hands on her head. "How do I explain any of this to my family. My car's totaled in the middle of nowhere. There isn't even a gorilla to pin this all on. Mario, what am I gonna do?! I'm SCREWED!"
"Say you got carjacked getting off FDR. You took a few cabs and taxis the way back home. They'll just be glad to see you, and even when thing's don't add up, they won't be able to come up with any reasonable story themselves. They'll HAVE to believe you. The cops won't know what the fuck happened here. Probably gonna write it off as cheap thrill arson. Ain't like they got anything better after the site's burned down."
She nodded."Okay...okay...might not be the most airtight thing, but I have nothing better. So, what are you gonna do? You said something about being in a game?"
"Yeah whoever 'taught' me how to use this Bit says I owe them. I'm gonna go home and sleep and hope this blows over fast. I got the Bit, I'll just give it back to them."
"Good luck."
"Thanks."
"So...I guess this goodbye? After this, I'm definitely going to Beverly Hills."
"Oh yeah, that's right..." Mario looked away. Forgot all about that with the shit that just happened with the gori- Donkey Kong. "Guess this means this is the last you'll ever see of me.
"Guess so."
They paused. There had to be something else. Both of them spending a few seconds searching for the words.
"But I guess that means there's no reason to not do this." She pulled him in close for a kiss.
In the snow.
Scrap metal all around them.
A burning building quite near.
And neither wanted this moment to ever end.
As the first sounds of sirens wailed off the distance, Pauline pulled back.
More. Mario wasn't ready to let go.
"I'm afraid we don't have much choice, Mario." She gave him one last smile, holding back tears as best she could. "But on that subject of choice, wanna know something?"
"Yeah?"
"If you had killed the gorilla, I would have forgiven you for it."
"Wha-what?"
"Yes, I would have been disgusted and horrified, and probably have thrown up, but I would have forgiven you."
"Well I would you have told me that earlier! It's easier to ask for forgiven than permission."
"Exactly why I didn't. But know I know you're not that dark of a person. No matter what happens, try to stay that way, okay?" Her arm was shaking. "If no one else. For me. Got it?"
Mario dropped his irritated look for a genuine smile. This was hurting Pauline just as much as it was hurting him. "Okay."
He held out his arm. A portal starting forming behind Pauline.
"Goodbye, Pauline."
"Goodbye, Mario."
GAME OVER!
YOU WIN!
dnoces a rof taht raeh tsuJ
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