A/N: Presenting...Part 3! Enjoy!

I do not own Super Mario or Sonic.

We arrived back at the chalet with Robotnik's corpse to find Sonic waiting for us. "No signs of Tails," he said. "I'm starting to worr – what the heck is that?"
"Robotnik's been murdered!" Daisy said. "Who could've done this?"

"Did you check his body for fingerprints?" Sonic asked.

"I don't think we have the tech here to do that," Luigi replied.

Yeah, not to mention the fact that basically everyone here is wearing GLOVES, so that would probably do butt-flippin'-nothing to help us!

"I'm traumatized," Yoshi said.

"And he just sent me that message, like, an hour ago," Sonic said. "And he was already heading home then. What could've happened to him so fast?"

I narrowed my eyes. "Where'd you find Robotnik's goggles again, hmm?"

"I told you, in the snow outside," Sonic said. "Robotnik probably dropped them while he was leaving, or getting dragged away by a wolf, or whatever the heck actually happened to him."

"You seriously think a wolf would shishkebab him on a pair of skiing poles?"

"Maybe, if it was roasting him over an open fire or something."

"Or maybe we're being stalked by a serial killer," Yoshi said. "And…oh man, we are close to Woodpeckers Pass. What if whatever happened back then is happening again now? And Robotnik's just the first one it's happening to?"

"Well then, this time let's at least tell someone what happened so people won't keep wasting their time speculating about it for the next 55 years," I said. I grabbed my phone from my pocket and-

"Dammit, are you kidding me? No reception?!" I yelled. "Curse you, you stupid mountain!"

"This is how it always starts," Junior said. "First the cell service goes out, then the power goes out, then everyone's LIFE goes out!"

"I think we should get out of here while we still can," Yoshi said. "In horror movies, there's always that brief window where people have a chance to get out, but then they never take it and they die!"

"If someone's up here on this mountain stalking us, then God help them when I get my hands on them," I said.

"I now know 107 ways we can torture them," Junior said.

"Everyone, stop, we're all getting ahead of ourselves," Peach said. "Robotnik could've died of…natural causes."

I rolled my eyes. "What about him being impaled on his skiing poles screams 'NATURAL CAUSES HERE!'?"

"What if this thing gets to Tails?" Sonic said. "We've gotta keep looking for him! He could be out there somewhere, being killed by some monster."

"But you already checked the slopes again," Daisy said.

"Well, maybe whatever did this dragged him somewhere else. I could never forgive myself if I let something bad happen to Tails."

"No, no, no, looking for the person who's already doomed always just gets more people pointlessly killed," Yoshi said. "I hate to say it, but…I think Tails is that doomed person. The rest of us should just get out of here now."

"What, because one person dies under mysterious circumstances?" Bowser asked. "That happens all the time at my castle. A Koopa's head is found underneath my bed, a rotting Goomba corpse is in the walls…nothing to worry about."

"You unnerve me," Shadow said.

"And I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but there's a snowstorm moving in tonight," Peach said. "So if we don't find Tails before that hits…."

"Come on, Sonic, let us help look for him," Knuckles said.

"Alright, fine, but only you guys," Sonic said. "I don't trust Mario and his company."

"Oh come on, what the heck did I ever do to you?" I asked.

"Well then, the rest of us can get ready for the competitions tomorrow," Peach said. "There's still some prep work to do."

What prep work? The ice skating arena had been ready since we got here. I turned and gave her an incredulous look, and she subtly winked.

Okay, so we weren't doing prep work

Luigi added, "And Mario, we can practice our-"

"Don't say it," I said. "Don't you say it."

He sighed.

"Alright; Amy, Shadow, Blaze, Silver, Knuckles, come with me then," Sonic said.

"What about me?" Metal Sonic asked.

"Yeah, and me," Vexer or Vester or whoever the crocodile is, said.

"You're gonna be useless," Sonic said. "You've always get those stupid headphones on; I can all too easily see you getting distracted by them and missing an important clue right in front of you. And I don't trust you, Metal Sonic."

"But I am Sonic," he replied. "The real Sonic."

Man, I can't stand this guy. Every single time I run into him, he's all, "I'm the real Sonic, Sonic's the fake Sonic," even though Metal Sonic is CLEARLY a robot! And not even the good ones like they have at Freddy Faztoad's Pizza, which look kinda sorta real; no, Metal Sonic's the lousy type where it's blatantly obvious that he's a robot.

"No you're not, you electronic cretin!" Sonic snapped. "Okay guys, let's go find Tails." Sonic left, followed by his five cohorts. So…Amy was the pink hedgehog, Shadow was the black one, Knuckles was the red one, Silver was probably the silver one, and that left…Blaze as the purple one? Okay, whatever, man.

"This is bogus!" Vexer said. "Actually, how do we know Tails didn't just come back to the chalet or something?"

"There is a…57.63% chance that that did indeed happen," Metal Sonic said. "It is worth investigating."

"Ha! That'll show Sonic – I am useful after all! C'mon, Metal Sonic and any of the rest of you who want to come. Let's go find Tails!"

Vexer, Metal Sonic, Wario, Waluigi, and Donkey Kong headed back into the chalet.

"What the heck are we gonna do with Robotnik's body?" Yoshi asked.

"Put him in the industrial-size freezer in the basement with all that freeze-dried carob that we all know not one of us is ever gonna eat," Bowser said. "Then once the snowstorm passes, we ship him back to South Island on a cargo plane or something."

"It's scary how quickly you came up with that idea," Luigi said.

"Well, if there's one thing I'm the king of – besides the Koopas, of course – it's improvising."

"Okay, so what prep work do we have to do?" Luigi asked.

"Hey, Bowser, Junior, why don't you two go help Vector and the other look for Tails?" Peach suggested.

Vector? Damn, why do I keep getting all their names wrong?

"Ohhh, no," Bowser said. "See, I've held many a secret meeting in my time, so I know all the signs of someone forming one. Claiming there some sort of 'work' to be done when it's clear there's not. Trying to get a select group of people alone by giving everyone else some stupid assignment to go out on. You're trying to get just you and the Mario Bros. and maybe Yoshi and Daisy alone so you can plot against me, aren't you? Well, whatever you have to say, you can say it to my face!"

"Are you seriously that paranoid?" Peach retorted. "Plotting against you? Now? With Robotnik dead and Tails missing?"

"Well, Dad is the popular scapegoat for everything that goes wrong in the Mushroom Kingdom," Junior said. "Remember last year when all your crops weren't growing and you blamed Dad for poisoning the soil, and then you realized it was because your idiot mushroom-head farmers forgot to even plant any seeds?"

Yeah…that was a whole fiasco.

"Alright, Bowser, if you want to stick around, fine," Peach said. "I think something is seriously wrong with Sonic."

"Hell yeah," Daisy said. "Here I thought I was the only one who noticed."

"It's hells yeah," Junior said. "Hells with an 's'."

"I have never heard it said that way in my entire life," Yoshi said.

"There's no such thing as multiple hells except in Dungeons and Draggadons," Daisy said.

"You really think there's something wrong with him?" Bowser asked. "Because I think he's just being his usual obnoxious self."

"He had no reaction whatsoever when Robotnik was killed, just happened to be wearing Robotnik's goggles and get that text from him when the rest of us weren't around, was reading Torture Through the Ages, told Shadow to piss off, and then called Metal Sonic a cretin," Peach argued. "If you ask me, I think he…."

"…Think he what?" Luigi asked.

"One of you was supposed to finish my sentence for me."

"We don't have time for flippin' theatrics!" I said. "If what you're coming just shy of saying is that you think Sonic killed Robotnik, then yeah, I think that's possible too."

"Well, that's…quite an accusation," Daisy said. "I mean, as far as I know, Sonic's never shown any sort of…violent behaviors like these before. He's not a maniac."

"Yeah, or it might just be that, up until now, his maniacal tendencies were latent, like Santa Toad's were in Miracle on 34th Street! And then what happened? Oh yeah, that's right. He killed the doctor guy, got locked up in an asylum, broke out, and then killed the owner of a house just so he could give the house to some girl he'd developed a soft spot for!"

"Mario, I think you missed big chunks of that movie," Yoshi said.

No, I was probably just drunk like I am every year to make it through the Christmas movies Luigi insists that we watch together.

"So…if Sonic did kill Robotnik, what do we do now?" Daisy said. "Is it really him doing this, or is he, like, possessed or something?"

"Let's hope he's not possessed," Yoshi said. "Then we'd have to exorcise him. Isn't there, like, a lot of red tape to go through in order for an exorcism to be authorized?"

"Screw the red tape; we'd just exorcise him ourselves," I said.

"How?"

"Start picking random movies and TV shows involving exorcisms and try one incantation or whatever after another until we find one that works."

"What even happened to Tails?" Bowser asked. "Do we think he's out there on the mountain somewhere, or did Sonic, you know…." He drew his finger across his throat.

"Sonic would never kill Tails," Yoshi said. "They're best friends."

"Not if he's gone coocoo bananas, they're not," I said. "I say we head back into the chalet, lock the doors, and keep our eye on the security cameras at the entrances. If Tails makes it back, we let him in. If Sonic comes back…let's cross that bridge when we come to it."

Luigi's eyes widened. "You're not saying we…leave him out there to freeze, are you?"

"Look, it worked in The Shimmering, that's all I'm saying. Crazy dude got lost in the hedge maze at the hotel and froze overnight.

"This is freaking me out," Yoshi said.

"And what do you propose we do, huh? Not talk about it and pretend it isn't happening?"

Yoshi gave a defeated sigh.

"Alright, let's get into the chalet, for now, like Mario said," Peach said. "Standing out here and freezing too isn't gonna do any of us any good."

"And what about Robotnik's corpse?" Daisy said.

"For once, I'm with Bowser," Peach said. "Let's take him down to the freezer."

All of us grabbed his body and hauled him inside, then locked the doors behind us. After bringing him down to the freezer, we headed up to the control center on the second floor to keep an eye on the chalet's security cameras. Out the windows, we could see that snow was starting to fall. "Peach, I thought you said the snow wasn't moving in until tonight," I said.

"Yeah, well, you know how forecasts are," she replied.

"Okay, what do we do now?" Luigi asked. "Because I'm scared. Like, staring-down-King-Boo scared. Like, just-opened-the-doors-to-Treacherous-Mansion-and-saw-the-darkness-inside-the-mansion…scared. Like-"

Bowser breather a stream of fire. "We get it; you've gone on stupid ghost-hunting adventures! Now shut up!"

"Hey, I saved this entire universe from being torn apart by a gateway to the Paranormal Dimension a couple years ago."

"What part of 'shut up' did you not understand?!"

"The part where I don't take orders from you, you…you…big bully!"

"So that's how you want this to go down, huh?" Bowser stomped towards Luigi. "With a fight? Because I'm all for a fight."

"Whup his ass, Dad!" Junior cheered.

"Guys, enough!" Peach said, walking between Luigi and Bowser. "We've got big problems here, and infighting isn't gonna solve anything!"

"Define 'problem,'" Junior said. "Because from where I'm standing, the problem is Luigi's big mouth, and I think him having to eat through a straw for a couple weeks will solve that problem lickety-split."

"You watch yourself, Junior," Luigi said. "After saving Evershade Valley, I'm more confident in myself than ever. Don't think you're going to intimidate me with a bunch of hot air. Just remember which one of us is still wearing a bib. And probably diapers, too."

"RAAAAGH!" Junior launched himself at Luigi and tackled him to the ground before my brother could even put up a fight.

"Whup his ass, son!" Bowser cheered.

Daisy and I ran over and pulled Junior off Luigi. We shoved him back towards Bowser, then helped Luigi up.

"If Mr. Green Cap can't control himself, then me and Junior are going to leave," Bowser said. "I've got Kamek on standby, ready to teleport us out of here at a moment's notice."

"Do we really need them?" Yoshi said. "I mean, breathing fire's really the only thing Bowser's useful for, but we've also got Blaze, and she's a pyrokinetic, so…."

Oh, so is that why she's called Blaze?

"Assuming she's still alive," Bowser said. "Face it. You need me. I don't need you, though, so I've got no reason to stay. Keep aggravating me and assaulting my son, and I'm gonna leave."

"He assaulted me!" Luigi said. "I'm the victim here!"

"Yes, we all know about your love of playing the victim. You're never responsible for anything that happens, it's always the universe treating you unfairly. 'Oh, King Boo hates me for no reason.' Well, what did you do to King Boo that he hates you for? 'Oh, I can't stop myself at the edges of cliffs and I go hurtling into bottomless pits all the time.' Buy boots with better traction! 'Oh, Mario's the older brother, he always looks down on me.' Well, maybe if you'd crawled down the birth canal a bit faster, you'd be the older brother!"

Luigi gasped. "You keep my mother's birth canal outta your damn mouth, you son of a-" He ran towards Bowser again, but Daisy and I managed to restrain him.

"Guys, look!" Peach said. She pointed to one of the security camera screens. "It's Shadow!"

We all turned to the screens. Sure enough, there was Shadow, dragging his gun behind him and, it looked like, bleeding into the snow. "Open the doors!" he yelled. "Sonic's out here and he's lost his marbles! He's killing us! Let me the hell in, guys! He's-"

Suddenly, the screens fizzed out, and the lights in the chalet died.

Lovely.

Guess it's not a horror tale until there's a blackout.

A/N: Part 4 coming on Monday, October 24th!