A/N: Here it is...Part 4! Enjoy!

I do not own Super Mario or Sonic.

"What do we do?" Junior asked.

"Uh, we let him in," Yoshi said. "That's Shadow! We can't leave him out there!"

"Do we really know it's Shadow?" I asked. "I mean, I could just be Sonic, and he Mission: Impossible -ed himself a Shadow mask to fool us so we'll let him in and then he'll gut us."

"Well then, we seem to have met an impasse."

Suddenly, Wario's voice came from down the hall. "You guys in here? What the heck happened to the lights?"

"We were about to find Tails, and then…darkness," Vector said.

"Shadow just showed up at the chalet's front doors," Luigi said. "I'm going down there to let him in."

"In the dark?" Waluigi cackled. "Sure you're brave enough?"

"I'm going to go down there, let Shadow in, figure out what happened, and then me and you are gonna have words, man. Words."

Luigi left the room. Yoshi saluted him as he left. "It's been an honor, man."

"Yoshi, I'm not going to die."

"Ooh, there's something we can do," Bowser said. "Let's place bets on what we think is going to happen. Who here thinks Green Cap's gonna die an excruciatingly painful death down there?"
"Bowser!" Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Yoshi, and I all shouted.

"Don't worry, Luigi, you'll be fine," Daisy said. "I believe in you."

"Thanks." Luigi left the room and headed down the stairs.

"…Okay, but seriously, who thinks he's gonna die a painful death?" Bowser said.

Peach fumbled around on the desk in the room, eventually finding a flashlight. She clicked it on, shedding some light on the room. A few seconds later, Wario, Waluigi, Donkey Kong, Metal Sonic, and Vector all entered the room. "So, what do we do now?" Vector asked.

"Well, assuming that's actually Shadow out there, once we get him inside, I say we go check out the generators by the ice-skating rink," Peach said. "Something obviously happened to them if the power's out."

"Mario and Luigi should go do it," Junior said. "Then they can do their lovey-dovey skating routine."

I clenched my fists. "Back off before I knock out your one baby tooth, you juvenile delinquent."

"Fight, fight, fight!" Wario chanted. "Is…is no one else gonna join in?"

"Keep it up and I'll smother you with my bib in your sleep," Junior said. "Doubt your brother'll be mocking my bib again after that."

"Keep it up and I'll wedge my plunger so far up your ass that…that…." Oh come on, why now?! Why did my Insult-O-Meter have to run dry now, now of all times?

Junior cupped a hand to his ear. "I'm…I'm waiting, Mario. You'll wedge your plunger so far up my ass that…what?"

I fumed, shaking my fists in frustration. "Confound it!" I yelled. I stormed towards the door, but before I could leave the room, Luigi and Shadow entered. "Oh, yay," Luigi said, tilting his head towards Wario's team. "They're here."

"You got a problem with that, buster?" Wario demanded.

Peach shone her light on Shadow. He had a long cut up the side of his face, and several more wounds on his chest and arms that looked to be bite marks.

"Shadow!" Vector exclaimed. "What happened to you? And where's the others? Sonic, Amy, Blaze, Silver, Knuckles. And did you find Tails?"

Shadow braced himself against the wall. "No Tails. Sonic…he went crazy out there. That bastard…killed Amy and Knuckles."

Daisy gasped. "He killed them?! Why?"

"No clue. As soon as we couldn't see the chalet anymore, he turned on us. We tried to subdue him, but then the snow started falling and we didn't stand a chance. He slashed Amy's throat first. Knuckles pinned him down for a few seconds and punched him in the face, and…Robotnik's goggles came off."

"Why do we still care about those stupid glasses in the wake of all this other stuff?" I asked.

"It's not the goggles, it's what was under them. His eyes were completely black except for these two glowing red dots in the center of them. Knuckles froze when he saw that, and Sonic was able to shove Knuckles off him. I took a few shots at Sonic at that point, but he grabbed the gun from my grasp, pistol-whipped me with it, and then…blew Knuckles away."

Man, this was breaking literally every horror movie rule. Isn't the villain only supposed to use their fists and blunt or bladed weapons to take down the heroes?

"Blaze, Silver, and I decided to get the hell out of there at that point, but he came after us. We got separated in the storm, and I managed to ditch Sonic; I think he was primarily chasing me. I don't know what happened to Silver and Blaze."

"Mario, Luigi, go get the lights back on," Peach said. "You're the closest thing we have to electricians here."

"…You do realize there is a vast difference between electricians and plumbers, right?" I asked.

"Uh, I have a degree in electrical work," Daisy said. "I could help."

"Oh, okay, Daisy and I can go do it, then," Luigi said. "We don't need your help, Mario. See you later."

"No, no, absolutely NO!" I said. "You two are just gonna get distracted with…laying down the wrong sort of plumbing instead of getting the power back on, and we all know what happens to people who waste time doing that in horror movies."

"What? Ew, no!" Daisy protested. "Our relationship isn't anything like that!"

"Wait, 'relationship'?" Luigi asked. "You always said there was nothing between us…."

"Uh…."

"Okay, I don't have time for this 'will-they-or-won't-they' B.S.," I said. "Yoshi, chop chop. Let's go see what happened with those generators."

"Uh, Mario, I have zero electrical skills," Yoshi said. "Yoshis are a very primitive race by nature. Traditionally, we don't use electricity that much."

"Well, the best way to learn is through practice," I said. "Now come on."

Yoshi sighed and followed me.

We headed down the stairs to the first floor, then to the back of the chalet and the ice-skating rink. Faint light came through the windows dominating one whole wall, casting an eerie glow on the shining ice. Outside, the wind whistled, and a light creaking came from the ceiling.

"This way." I pointed to the back wall. "The generators are back here."

"Mario, why are the generators next to the ice rink?" Yoshi said. "Wouldn't the generators just melt the ice? This setup seems…I don't want to say stupid, but…."

"I think this ice has the bare minimum water content for it to legally be able to be called ice. The rest of it's preservatives and carcinogens and other crap like that. But that's just what I've heard through the grapevine. Take it with a grain of salt, if you wish."

We headed onto the ice, our boots thankfully providing us enough traction to stay upright. The wind continued to howl outside, and whatever was creaking in the ceiling or the pipes crisscrossing the room just below the ceiling continued its obnoxious creaking.

Yoshi shivered. "Okay, Mario, where are they? I'm freezing my you-know-whats off right now. There's no heat in the chalet anymore, and it's probably, like, minus 10 degrees out there."

"Yoshi, it is not minus 10 degrees. Saying 'minus 10 degrees' means you are subtracting 10 degrees from something. The proper thing to say is 'negative 10 degrees.'"

"But Mario, all the meteorologists in the Mushroom Kingdom say 'minus.'"

"Yeah, and everyone in the Mushroom Kingdom also says 'for all intensive purposes,' so I suppose that's right, huh?"

"You mean it isn't?"

Battle of wits. Unarmed Toad. Not wasting my time.

"Here's the generators," I said. I climbed off the rink and knelt in front of the generators. I opened the front panel of one of them. A hiss of smoke and sparks flew out, briefly illuminating something wedged amongst the generator's inner workings.

"Oh man, I have nightmares about this, like, every night," Yoshi said. "I'm in a dark place like this, and I open up a door, and there's a FACE staring out at me. No body, just a hovering FACE!"

"Uh…where the heck did you see a face?"

"In the generator. There was a face in there. Didn't you see it in the light from the sparks?"

"Uh, no, I saw, like, a basketball or something."

"Mario, there was a face in there."

"Maybe it was a basketball with a face on it, like the ball that that guy thinks is alive in Cast Away."

"Mario, have you ever actually watched any of these movies you reference?"

I reached into the generator and felt the object. It was definitely not a basketball. In fact, it felt…fuzzy and crunchy at the same time. Like how all the carpets in my house feel. I grabbed it with both hands and yanked on it, but lost my grip and went sprawling backwards onto the ice. "Yoshi, grab that thing with your tongue and pull it out of there," I said.

"I don't even know what it is," Yoshi protested. "I'm not grabbing it with my tongue."

"You grab Goombas with your tongue all the livelong day, and you don't know where the heck they've been!"

Yoshi sighed. He shot his tongue into the generator, and said something that sounded vaguely like, "It feels crunchy." He walked backwards onto the ice, and finally the thing flew out of the generator. Yoshi lost his grip on it and fell on top of me, and the thing flew towards the ceiling. It hit…something up there, something that fell to the ice with an audible splat. The carpet basketball, meanwhile, fell back to the rink as well, sounding vaguely like a tumbleweed as it bounced around.

A few seconds later, the lights came back on, and Yoshi screamed.

"What? What is it?!" I exclaimed, trying to shove Yoshi off me. "Get up, gosh dang it!"

"IT'S TAILS!" Yoshi screamed. "AND KNUCKLES! THEY'RE…THEY'RE DEAD!"

Well, we already knew Knuckles was dead, so I don't know why the heck he sounded all shocked about that. And Tails I'd basically written off as doomed, but Yoshi's always been considerably more optimistic than me, so whatever.

I tilted my head backwards, just barely managing to see what Yoshi saw. At the center of the arena was Knuckles' body with a noose around his neck. He'd fallen into a giant puddle of blood that had presumably dripped from the gash Sonic cut in his neck…come to think of it, how the heck did Yoshi and I manage to miss the blood when we walked across the rink? Well, him hanging from the ceiling certainly explained that creaking.

And on the far side of the arena was what looked like Tails's head, burned to a crisp from being stuffed in the generator.

Oh yay. Which meant that since we knew Sonic killed Knuckles and had all but confirmed he killed Tails, that blue bastard was already in the chalet. So much for holing up in here and trying to keep him out.

Suddenly, what I guess you could call a laugh came from somewhere above us…only it wasn't so much a laugh, as it was the sound a hyena with throat cancer would probably make. "M-M-Mario, look at that," Yoshi said.

"Look at WHAT?!" I yelled. "You're on top of me; I can't see a dang-blasted thing!"

"I'm not moving. If I take my eyes off it, it's gonna move. That's how horror movies always work."

"Just slide off me and keep looking at whatever it is. It can't be that hard to do!"

"I'll try."

Several seconds later, the bulk of Yoshi's weight was finally off me, and I could get up. He pointed at the ceiling. "Up there, in the pipes."

I looked up. There, above the pipe for all the hot water in the chalet, were a pair of glowing red lights.

"That's what Shadow said Sonic's eyes looked like, isn't it?" Yoshi whimpered.

"What do we do?" I asked.

"You're asking me? You're always the one with the plan, albeit most of the time a morally ambiguous one I hate going along with."

"Are you serious right now?"

"In a situation like this I'll take what I can get."

Suddenly, the red eyes vanished. "Where'd he go?" Yoshi cried. "I thought if we kept our eyes on him, he couldn't move."

"Yoshi, for crying out loud, that's not even a rule of horror movies. It's hit-and-miss at best, unless you're dealing with a Weeping Angel, which we most certainly are not. Let's just head for the doors, NOW!"

We ran for the doors to exit the rink, but as soon as we did, a horrible metal snapping came from behind us. I whirled around just in time for a jet of water bursting out of the hot water pipe to slam into my crotch. OW! I flew into the chest of ice skates to the side of the door; several skates flew all over the place. Meanwhile, the water shot onto the ice, cracking it. Yoshi leapt off, grabbed he with his tongue, and flipped me onto his back.

"Well, whatever's in that ice, hot water still melts it, apparently," I said.

Yoshi grabbed the doors with his tongue and flung them open. We ran out into the hall, and Yoshi locked the doors behind us.

Not a second too soon.

On the far side of the doors, Sonic appeared, his face mere inches from the glass. Shadow was right. His eyes were completely blank, except for two red pinpricks of light glowing in the darkness. His face split open in some demonic mockery of a grin, and he laughed another hyena laugh.

"You can't keep me in here, Mario," he said. "You will all die. ALL OF YOU!" Another fit of demented laughter followed.

"What do you want with us?" Yoshi asked. "Get out of our friend and leave us alone!"

Friend? Ehhh….

"He disturbed my slumber," Sonic said. "In that cave. The Cursed Cave of Snow Land. I've been trapped in there for centuries, and now I am free once more. Free to kill as many of you pathetic mortals as I want."

"Why wasn't that cave on any maps?"

Seriously? That's what Yoshi was wondering about?

Sonic shrugged. "Probably in the hopes no one would ever find me. It would seem I've been forgotten over time, though, given that some morons decided to build a ski resort right next to my cave."

"Yoshi, for crying out loud, stop conversing with this thing and get us back to the others!" I yelled.

"We could probably learn a lot from him, though. Not to mention, if we keep our eyes on him-"

"MOOOOVE!"

"Fine, Mario. There's no need to be so rude about it."

We ran down the hall, Sonic's crazed laughter chasing us the whole way. We arrived back at the control center less than a minute later, thanks to Yoshi taking a shortcut by tongue-slinging us onto the second-floor landing instead of walking up the stairs. And just as we walked back into the room, the lights went out again.

Well, I guess that was to be expected. I mean, we locked Sonic in the generator room, so of course he'd knock out the power again. Still annoying, but at least it didn't come completely out of left field or something.

Peach clicked the flashlight back on and shone it at us. "What happened?" she asked. "The power came back on and…now it's out again."

Junior took one look at my wet pants and predictably jumped to conclusions. "Mario wet himself! Look, look, Mario wet himself!"

"Sonic's in the chalet," Yoshi said. "He killed Tails and Knuckles, and he knocked out the power. We just barely made it out of the skating rink alive. There was something in that cave Sonic investigated, like a demon or something. And now it's free again and…I guess just wants to kill people."

"Why do demons always just want to kill people?" Daisy said. "At a certain point it just gets a bit cliché."

Suddenly, Luigi screamed. "Mario, there's a…a…an ice skate in your arm!"

I looked down. Lo and behold, the blade of an ice skate was lodged in the underside of my arm. Must've gotten stuck there when I flew into the chest of skates.

"Really, Yoshi, you didn't notice that when you grabbed me?" I asked.

"No, I was a bit preoccupied with the demon chasing us," he said.

"That looks bad," Vector said. "We should get that thing out of your arm."

"Yeah, you could get tetanus from that," Peach said.

"Yeah, and there's a demon in the chalet that could rip all our heads off," I said. "I think we have more pressing concerns right now!"

Bowser raised an eyebrow. "You seriously want to be walking around with an ice skate stuck in your arm?"

I glared daggers at him. "Don't pretend like you care about me. You're the same guy who blew my brains out with a Bob-Omb on N64 Rainbow Road! Yeah, thought I forgot that, dintcha?"

"Well, there I knew you would respawn like it had never happened because that's what always somehow happens in Mario Kart. If you die here, I'll be without a nemesis and my whole life will be pointless."

"I could be your nemesis," Luigi said.

"That would defy the natural order of things. Mario's nemesis is me, your nemesis is King Boo, Yoshi's nemesis is Kamek, Daisy's nemesis is Tatanga, Junior's nemesis is Diddy Kong, Peach's nemesis is Wendy, and Captain Toad's nemesis is courage."

Man, those last three came out of nowhere. Well, except Captain Toad; I can see that one.

"I hate that monkey," Junior spat.

Donkey Kong made some sort of angry monkey sound and smacked Junior on the back, then yelped and clutched his hand because he stabbed it on Junior's spikes.

"How the heck is your nemesis Wendy?" I asked Peach.

"Every time Bowser kidnaps me, she and I get into…very heated arguments about fashion," Peach replied.

Don't know, don't care to know.

"No, I'm Mario's nemesis!" Wario said.

"Yeah, and I'm Luigi's nemesis," Waluigi said self-righteously.

"No you're not; you only came on the scene because Wario needed a partner in sporting events," Luigi said. "King Boo's kidnapped my brother twice. Have you ever done that?"

"…No," Waluigi said. He then turned to Wario and whispered, "Write that down, write that down."

Just what I need: looking over my shoulder constantly to make sure those two clowns aren't about to shove a sack over my head and haul me off to Wario Colosseum.

Suddenly, in the hall just outside the door, at the periphery of the flashlight's reach, a shadow passed by.

"What was that?" Yoshi whimpered.

"What was what?" Bowser asked.

"That thing that passed by the door," Yoshi said. "I saw it for a second…and then it was gone."

"Me too," Luigi said.

"Nobody better flippin' say 'me three,'" I said. "But I also saw it."

"He's taunting us," Shadow said. "Trying to psych us out so we won't know where to be looking when he finally attacks."

"Uh…how about the door?" Vector said. "Where else could he come in through?"

I gestured with my good arm. "How about the window?"

"How would he get in through the window?" Junior asked.

"I don't know, climb onto the roof and drop down, climb up a downspout and jump in, he could really do anything!"

Sonic's voice came from the hall. "Come out and play…."

"Shut the door!" Daisy said. "Gosh, why didn't we think to do that before?"

Bowser and Vector slammed the door shut, then locked it. "There. Good to go," Bowser said. He then yelled through the door, "We don't want to play, you moron! Go back to whatever hellhole you crawled out of!"

Sonic laughed, his voice right outside the door. "That's not very nice of you."

Suddenly, his fist punched right through the door, hitting Bowser square in the nose. He stumbled backwards. In the fraction of a second before Sonic pulled his hand back through the door, I saw that he had donned Knuckles' spiked gloves. Oh yay, so now he's gonna be even tougher to fight. Just what we needed.

Sonic punched another hole in the door with his other hand, right below the first one. He looked through the combined hole with one of his eyes and said, "Heeeeeere's Sonic!"

Oh yay. The obligatory reference to The Shimmering that all horror tales taking place in a snowy mountain setting have nowadays.

A/N: Part 5 coming on Monday, October 31st!