A/N: Welcome back! Hope you enjoy Part 2, and please R&R!

I do not own Super Mario or Sonic.

I arrived back at the chalet at the top of the mountain and, to my surprise, Sonic wasn't there yet. I actually beat Sonic somewhere for once? That was a first. Well, he'd certainly never be living this one down.

Call me petty. I don't care.

I decided to head to the chalet's library, not because I wanted to read but because all the bookcases would make it an easy place to hide if anyone wanted to come pester me for some stupid reason. And yes, Luigi wanting to practice our skating routine did constitute a "stupid reason." I had several hours before our next event; I really didn't want to be bothered by anyone in that time.

A couple hours later, I had found nothing interesting to do in the library. At some point I'd apparently fallen asleep slouched against the backside of one of the bookcases, because I was suddenly jolted awake by the sound of the library doors being thrown open. "Robotnik!" Peach's voice called. "Robotnik, you in here?"

"Why would a bad guy be in a library?" Yoshi asked. "I wrote an article about villains last year for the Mushroom Kingdom Herald, and in my research for it, I determined that the overwhelming majority of villains hate books."

"Well, Robotnik's a pretty smart villain," one of Sonic's cohorts – Tails, maybe? – said. "He has an IQ of 300, y'know. You don't get that smart without doing a lot of reading."

Alright, this level of stupidity warranted my intervention.

I got up and walked down an aisle towards the front of the library. "You do know you can't trust bad guys' claims about what their IQs are, right?"

Everyone else turned to face me. "Oh, Mario, we were wondering where you were," Luigi said. "Hey, is Robotnik in here? We can't find him either."

I crossed my arms. "Why am I not surprised? Robotnik and I both go missing, and who's the one you go looking for? Oh yeah, not your friend and brother; the evil mad scientist."

"Mario, we went looking for Robotnik instead because we figured he'd probably given in to his villainous ways and kidnapped and duct tape-gagged you or something," Yoshi said. "Have a little faith in us, please."

…Huh. Okay, that added up.

"Well, now it's just one person we're looking for; that makes it easier," Tails said. "We've searched the whole chalet now; there's no sign of Robotnik anywhere."

"Then take his two robot slaves or whatever the heck they are and start interrogating them," I suggested.

The two robots were suddenly flung over the crowd into the library, then crashed to the floor several feet from me. The things were punched full of holes almost beyond recognition. Shadow walked to the front of the crowd. "Already did that. Knuckles and I took 'em and demanded they tell us where Robotnik was. Damn things were useless."

"Robotnik's gonna want to be compensated for those, you know," Wario said.

"Yeah, and I'll tell him he can shove it."

"So he's not in here, Mario?" the pink hedgehog asked.

"Nope," I replied. "Do we seriously care where he is? I mean, as long as he isn't holding any of us hostage, do we really care what the heck happened to him?"

"My thoughts exactly," Shadow said.

"Mario, that's the exact sort of thing the bad guys would do to us," Peach said. "We can't stoop to their level."

"No, that's exactly why we should do this," I said. "Give him a taste of his own medicine and see how he likes it. Isn't Woodpeckers Pass somewhere around here? Let's just chalk it up to him vanishing into that like those Toads and Yoshis did back in 1959 and move on with our lives."

"Mario, don't even joke about that," Yoshi said. "My grandfather's second cousin once removed's wife's half-brother's mother-in-law's nephew's daughter's step-uncle was one of the Yoshis who vanished in Woodpeckers Pass."

I'm pretty sure a person could be related to everyone in the world by that number of connections.

I surveyed the crowd. "Where the heck's Sonic? He isn't here either. There's just that weird robot version of him."

"I am the true Sonic," the robot said. "The one you call Sonic is just a lame knockoff of me."

…Okay, I wasn't even bothering arguing that point with him.

"He's up in his room, saying he's taking some 'personal time'," Tails said. "I think I heard him crying in there. Mario, I think you hurt his feelings earlier."

Oh gimme a flippin' break. "How? By cutting him off in mid-sentence? I do that to everyone! By pointing out the fact that he wouldn't be on the ski lift with us if he investigated the cave? That was just that: a fact! My theory's that he found something disturbing in that cave, and he was either traumatized by it or possessed by a demon or ghost or something living in the cave. One or the other."

"Mario, you watch too many horror movies," Yoshi said.

I don't think it's that I've seen too many horror movies, I think it's that I've seen a small number of them, like The Descent, a few too many times. But, more importantly….

"How do we know Robotnik isn't holding Sonic captive in that room?" I asked.

"Because he was talking to us, you moron," Waluigi said. "Any villain worth their salt knows that as soon as you capture a hero, you gag them."

"First off, Robotnik may very well not be worth his salt. Second, he could've forced Sonic to say that stuff, recorded it, then gagged him, and had the recording ready to play if anyone came looking for Sonic."

"That seems a bit overcomplicated," Bowser said. "Where the heck would he get a stupid idea like that?"

Obviously someone's never seen Ferris Buellertoad's Day Off.

"If Sonic's sad, we should just leave him alone for now," a purple probably-another-hedgehog said.

"Yeah, and if he's getting gutted by Robotnik, we should go help him, if for no other reason than to kick Robotnik's ass!"

Shadow cracked his knuckles. "I like your thinking. I'll go blow down the door. Who's with me?"

"Shadow, wait a second," Peach said.

Aaaaand here we go. Peach, the persistent thorn in the side of the noble venture known as vigilantism, strikes again. Two years ago, back in New Super Mario Bros. U, I stole Roy's Bill Blaster during the battle with him at the end of Rock-Candy Mines, then used that to shoot my way through Meringue Clouds, defeat Ludwig in one hit by castrating him with a Bullet Bill, and shoot Bowser's flagship out of the sky before heading to Peach's Castle. Then, during the final battle, I was going to use it to blow off Bowser's head and be done with these stupid adventures forever, only for Peach to be like, "No, Mario, don't do it! He may be evil but he doesn't deserve to die!" which distracted me long enough for Bowser to swat the Bill Blaster out of my hands and into the lava moat.

"Don't listen to her, Shadow!" I yelled over Peach's next words. "Barge in there and take down Robotnik!"

Shadow nodded and sped out of the library before anyone could stop him.

"Shadow, wait!" Peach said. "Dang, those hedgehogs can run fast when they want to."

"Let him go," Daisy said. "I doubt he's really gonna do anything. He seems like the all-talk-and-no-follow-through sorta guy."

"No, he'll absolutely follow through," a crocodile – I think his name's Vexer or something like that? – said. "You know how you mushroom-heads have comic books about that guy the Punishroom? Well…that's basically Shadow."

"We've gotta stop him," Peach said.

"Are you forgetting how fast he is?" Knuckles replied. "He's probably up at Sonic's room taking out Robotnik-"

A quick series of three gunshots rang out throughout the chalet. "What the heck was that?!" Yoshi cried.

"He did say he was gonna blow down Sonic's door," a silver hedgehog said.

"I thought, like, Big Bad Werewolf-type 'blow down the door,' not gun-type 'blow down the door.'"

"I knew I should've had everyone pass through some sort of security before entering the chalet," Peach said.

A few seconds later, Shadow raced back to us, along with Sonic….

…who was wearing Robotnik's goggles.

"Where did you find those?" Daisy asked.

"They were in the snow outside," Sonic said. What the heck was up with his voice? It sounded lower than his usual borderline nasal intonation.

"Well, he doesn't look sad," I said to Tails, giving him my "told ya so!" look. "So what the heck were you doing up there?"

"Reading this," Shadow said, tossing me a book. It was titled Torture Through the Ages: Prehistory to Modern Times.

"He stole that from my room!" Junior said. "I was going crazy looking for it before I got roped into this stupid search party."

"You stole my copy of Torture Through the Ages?" Bowser growled. "I've been looking for that for weeks!"

Well, this was getting stupid. "Okay, I'm out," I said. "See you later, folks."

"We still haven't found Robotnik," Yoshi said.

"And as I've already made clear, I don't flippin' care about finding Robotnik!" I said. "Now is it time for the snowboard contest yet or what?"

"It wouldn't really be ethical to have our snowboard contest with Robotnik still missing," Peach said. "I mean, we could be snowboarding while he's getting torn apart by some wild animal. I could never live with myself if I learned that."

Ah, conscience. I pity the fool who has one.

"Be right back," Sonic said. "Gotta use the bathroom before we head out in the cold again."

TMI, dude, but whatever.

"So are we snowboarding or what?" Wario asked. "Because I've got some moves I'm eager to show off."

"What? Splitting your pants wide open while you try to do an ollie?" I snarked.

Wario narrowed his eyes. "I beat you up all through grade school; don't think I can't still do it now."

"Well, back then you were a bit more athletic. Not much, but you were required to take gym a few days a week, whereas nowadays all you do is sit around on your ass eating bowls of cheese puffs drizzled with maple syrup while drawing up pointlessly convoluted evil plans that we all know you're never even gonna execute because your IQ is lower than that of a slug's."

Wow. When I'm really in an insulting mood, I can be insulting!

"A slug, now?" Wario said. "I am much smarter than a slug! I know that the square root of 100 is 10,000! I know that the first ten digits of pi are 5.2344567361! I know that toadtanium is the 87th element on the periodic table, and I know that calculus is some fake thing made up by Toads just so they could make a class higher than…than trigometrics, which is the most advanced math course there is!"

To quote Luke Toadwalker from Toad Wars: The Last Jedi: "Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong."

Wario balled his fists and stomped towards me, but before the situation could escalate further, Sonic returned. "Hey, I just got a text from Robotnik," he said, then held up his phone for us to see.

ROBOTNIK: Goin home. No point sticking round bc im gonna lose anyway. U suck sonic.

"Huh," Tails said. "Never thought I'd see Robotnik admit defeat. And if he left, then why did he leave Metal Sonic here?"

"And Orbot and Cubot," Shadow said, pointing his thumb at the two wrecked robots.

"Well, in any case, at least now we know where he is," Peach said. "He has officially forfeited, so the games must go on without him. Although now we have an odd number of competitors, so we'll have to give Amy a new partner for the Figure Skating Pairs competition."

"Oh, thank God," the pink hedgehog said.

"Mario, we still haven't-"

"Luigi, do not go there," I said.

"Are we gonna go snowboarding now?" Junior asked. "I've been looking forward to this all month. I've been taking snowboarding lessons up on Frosted Glacier since September. I don't think there's a thing about snowboarding I don't know at this point. I-"

I rolled my eyes and headed upstairs to get my snowboard so I'd be spared the rest of Junior's boring monologue.

I arrived at the bottom of the mountain after Sonic, Shadow, Metal Sonic, Amy, the purple hedgehog, the silver hedgehog, Knuckles, Peach, Waluigi, Luigi, and even gosh dang Bowser Jr., but ahead of everyone else.

"Where's Tails?" I asked. "And why the heck is Sonic still wearing those stupid goggles?"

"You're just jealous you didn't get them first," Sonic said.

Oh. My. Gosh. Why the heck does everyone say that after I insult something they're wearing? I'm clearly insulting it because it looks stupid, not because I like it!

"Where's Tails?" I asked. "Isn't he fast too? Why isn't he here already?"

"I don't know," the purple hedgehog said. "And for that matter, I actually beat Sonic, who's a lot faster than me, down here. Asked him where Tails was, but he had no idea."

"I'm just concerned with getting down here as fast as I can, not how fast anyone else gets down here," Sonic said.

I narrowed my eyes. Something was…off about him. He and Tails are usually inseparable; now Tails had gone missing and he didn't seem to care one iota.

Over the next few minutes, everyone else made it down the mountain. Everyone, that is, except Tails.

"Where the heck is he?" Peach said. "Bowser, Wario, you two were last down the mountain. Did you see him anywhere…like, stuck in a snowbank or something?"

Oh, sure; ask the two people who are most likely to blatantly lie to your face.

"Nope," Bowser growled, then chuckled. "That would be funny. A pair of tails just sticking straight into the air from a snowbank."

"Don't recall seeing anything," Wario said. "Did he go sightseeing or something? Like Sonic wasted time doing earlier? Maybe Tails wanted to go check out that cave and got stuck."

"I could go look for him there," Sonic said. "I'll make a pass back up the slopes too. Everyone else, go on and head back to the chalet. If I find him, I'll bring him back with me."

"Shouldn't we all look for him?" Luigi suggested. "We'd cover more ground that way."

"But you're not as fast as me," Sonic said. "I can get it done quicker. You'd just slow me down."

"Really, because you were pretty slow getting down the mountain just now," Shadow snarked.

Sonic frowned and balled his fists, and I actually thought he and Shadow were going to get into a fist-on-gun fight then and there. Instead Sonic just growled, "Piss off, Shadow," and raced back up the snowboard path.

Sonic?

Curse?

Never heard that before.

I mean, not that I consider "piss" to be a "real" curse, but it seems like everyone else in the Mushroom Kingdom does, so whatever.

"Well then, if Sonic wants us to head back, let's head back," I said. "No point arguing about it with someone who isn't even here."

Peach sighed. "I guess."

The ski lift cars arrived shortly after that. Yoshi was the first to open one of the doors, and as soon as he did, he screamed.

"What the heck is it?" I asked, walking over.

"Robotnik…Robotnik…he's DEAD!" Yoshi screamed.

I shoved him to the side and looked inside the car. Sure enough, there was Robotnik, with his two skiing poles X-ed straight through him.

Yoshi vomited in the snow. Really? That's an actual thing? Someone getting disgusted and never throwing up? Huh. And here I thought that was just made up for movies and books and stuff.

Shocker.

A/N: Part 3 coming on Monday, October 17th!