JMJ
Chapter Four
The sky became somewhat overcast.
Befitting the mood, Orangusnake thought.
The wind picked up and blew his cape perfectly as he stared down at the grave he had made for Mao Mao. There was a little vase with flowers sitting on top of the mound.
Daisies.
As the rest of the crew, wide-eyed and solemn, stood at a respectful distance on either side of their emotional captain, Orangusnake bowed his head before the grave. Boss Hosstrich and Ratarang exchanged shrugs when Orangusnake had his eyes closed. They straightened up again once his eyes were opened.
"Oh, Mao Mao," he said wiping away a stray tear. "I just want to say that as much as I despised you as my enemy, I really respected you as a rival. Something in my hearts and souls has been torn by your unfitting parting from this world. I know it was a cheap-shot, and I know wherever you are your honor has been besmirched by such a parting. Please accept my peace offering with you so that you may be a free spirit once more."
Elegant tears began to fall, and the wind blew them twinkling from his cheeks.
"There, there, Boss," said Ratarang patting Orangusnake on the knee.
He and the other two assumed Orangusnake was finished, but just as Orangusnake looked about to turn away he threw out his arms passionately towards the mound of dirt and gasped, "Oh!"
He almost kicked Ratarang by accident, and just as Ratarang got out of his way, Orangusnake stepped on his tail instead.
"Ack!" Ratarang cried, and tried to pull out from under the foot. "Hey, I'm dyin' here!" Yanking on his tail proved as useless as his shout as Orangusnake continued.
With arms again at his sides, Orangusnake said, "Who am I fooling? Having you as an enemy gave my life meaning, after all. You were the one responsible for who I am today! Without you I'd probably still be catching my tail on mousetraps in people's pockets as they passed by the beach road. Without you, I'm just a petty thug and not a pirate. I almost wish that you were still alive so that we could have gone on like we were— two creatures in combat—at least for a little while longer…"
Still under the mound of dirt with his head sticking out the side of the cliff and unnoticed by the completely distraught lunatic, Mao Mao had been listening quite to his regret to this psychotic monologue. With one eye squinting very low and the other raising up in disbelief that anyone could speak so stupidly, he was pretty much frozen for the moment. When at last he found himself enough to exchange one squinty eye for the other he muttered, "What is he talking about?"
"But that's all in the past," Orangusnake went on putting a hand over his face.
Even the Tanner-half's head looked rather morose though he really did not know why.
"Now, the world must move on," spoke the mouth of the Coby-half as the usual speaker of the two-in-one villain.
How befitting that the sky was continuing to darken. Rumbles of thunder could be heard in the distance as the wind grew into a gale.
"But at least, if you could do me a favor for old time's sake, Mao Mao!" Orangusnake prayed with hands folded and head bowed in worship of his fallen foe. "Give me a sign." He held out his hands and bowed on one knee finally releasing Ratarang's tail; the rat sped off like a bullet crying and kissing his tail as he stroked it like a wounded pet. "Give me a sign that you are well in the afterlife and that I am free to move on."
"Oh, make me puke, why don't ya," muttered Mao Mao, but he blinked and his eyes went wide. A slow smile formed on Mao Mao's face.
The wind died down, and Orangusnake felt his cape close in around his shoulders. He sighed, and stood upright with shoulders slumped. He sniffled.
His crew gaped with mouths open to their limit, but they quickly clamped their mouths shut again as Orangusnake turned around.
"That was some beaut of a eulogy, Sir," said Boss Hosstrich taking off his hat.
Ratarang wiped tears from his eyes and put a paw to his heart, "Yeah, got me right here."
"That was the weirdest, scariest thing I ever saw, Boss," sobbed Ramaraffe affectionately.
Orangusnake put his hand into a firm fist and rested the other hand on Ramaraffe's shoulder.
"No," he said, "the scariest thing is the fact that I did not realize my mistake before…how truly important Mao Mao is to this world… but—" He shrugged. "I guess it just makes the world easier for us pirates now."
"That's the spirit!" said Hosstrich.
"Yeah," laughed Ratarang nervously. "I mean, if anything, you were the one gettin' kinda scary like you were gunna bury yourself with Mao Mao in his gra—"
Ploff!
It came from the dirt over the fake grave and knocked over the vase of flowers with a klumpf.
Everyone turned in time to see the lightning strike behind a gnarled-looking red-gloved hand covered in dirt sticking straight out from the mound that Orangusnake had created.
The Sky Pirates gasped and jumped back. Their eyes grew wide and their teeth clenched. Ratarang, Boss Hosstrich, and Ramaraffe were holding each other shivering by the end as Mao Mao's body slowly emerged from the grave until he stood upright with head bowed and eyes closed. Orangusnake about a yard in front of his subordinates took one step forward in his awe.
Despite his fears he felt his eyes well with tears of joy.
"This is the sign?" he asked, a smile daring to appear on his troubled face. "You actually came back from the spirit world to tell me it's okay? Oh, Mao Mao, thank you, I don't deserve—"
He took another step forward but stopped. A disturbing smile also crossed Mao Mao's ragged muddy face. Then it turned into a grin that put Orangusnake's misplaced optimism where it belonged. Certainly not here. His own smile faded away, and the sky seemed to get darker still as with the cue of thunder rumbling, Mao Mao's eyes flashed open.
The crew squealed through their teeth in fright, and Orangusnake blinked stupidly with mouth ajar. Strangely, the Tanner-half was smiling placidly, but this was no smiling matter.
The cat's eyes were dark and hollow. The greenish hue seemed to be replaced with a bruise colored ring around a core reddish flame in each eye that replaced his pupils in spaces of empty blackness like some modern internet zombie. It made his ragged muddy fur and ripped cape look even more menacing as he threw back his head and laughed.
The crew screamed and began running around in circles babbling unintelligible things over the roar of the falls and the rumbling of thunder and the eldritch laughter. Except that if one listened carefully Ratarang might have screamed something along the lines of, "I'm facing the livin' dead here!" Orangusnake only stopped to look at them for a second when they ran into each other in front of him and then fell onto the ground.
His attention resumed on Mao Mao as the cat began to walk slowly and steadily towards him.
Shivering now, Orangusnake took a step back as his fingers turned rigid up at his chest plate. A faint whimper escaped him, but he was mesmerized by those lifeless eyes staring right into his. After that first step, he only brought his other leg next to the first so that his knees could knock together. His neck bowed his head rather low over the chest plate with an involuntary hiss.
Glinting harshly with a cold, atmospheric metallic sound, Mao Mao's katana was unsheathed. Mao Mao stepped over the glazed-eyed head of Ramaraffe, and she only reacted with a twitch as the cape rolled over her face. After what felt some time, Mao Moa stood but feet away from Orangusnake.
"Yes," he hissed with a grin seemingly wider than a mortal should be able to grin. "I've come to you, Orangusnake…"
He held out his katana so that it was inches from Orangusnake's snout, and the snake recoiled. The Coby-half gulped upon his dry throat, and for a second realized how much harder and faster his heart was beating compared to the other. (Gross, maybe, but in their combined form the two halves could feel each other's vitals and pains almost as well as their own.) It caused him to wonder if the Tanner-half was so beyond terror that he was in a sort of trance. Or maybe it was something deeper that the orangutan sensed in his simplicity that the snake could not.
The Tanner-half was not smiling anymore anyway. Honestly, to a normal person he might have just looked a little befuddled, but by this time the Coby-half was nearly convinced of the sixth sense the Tanner-half somehow must be experiencing.
"Destiny?" he hissed.
"Your destiny is to be fulfilled this day, Orangusnake!" said Mao Mao. "How about I take you with me back to the dark side of the spirit world to join me in combat for eternity?"
"What?" Orangusnake squeaked.
"Isn't that what you wanted? What you asked for?" Mao Mao mocked. "You said that I gave you meaning and without me your life is meaningless. That we are two sides of the same coin of good and evil."
Orangusnake fell to his knees, eyes still on Mao Mao's. The katana followed him perfectly on the way down.
When Orangusnake remained frozen after that, Mao Mao pressed, "There is no better way to keep this tie of villain and hero than to continue our fight forever. Right?"
With that disturbing grin, Mao Mao jolted his head upwards uncomfortably close to Orangusnake's face so that he flung his arms back at the scent of death coming from behind those sharp locked cage of teeth that had not been brushed for two days.
"Forever?" asked Orangusnake.
Lightning struck.
"If someone comes to take your soul, Orangusnake, and that means eternity…" Mao Mao growled.
Orangusnake winced and tremblingly asked, "Which one?"
With a frown and a step back that almost gave him away, Mao Mao stared at him in disgusted disbelief, but the thunder rumbled and Mao Mao's atmosphere returned.
"Yours, you spineless snake!" snapped Mao Mao rather impatiently. "This has nothing to do with your monkey friend. This is between you and me!"
Orangusnake shrugged and with a nervous grin tittered, "Well, actually he's an orangutan? It's in my name? Right? Orangu—"
"Have fun fighting me in the spirit world without his arms and get your laser axe ready to meet the steel of my blade!" spat Mao Mao pressing the katana closer and closer to Orangusnake's face.
"Can you still feel pain in the spirit world?"
"Yessssssssssss!"
Orangusnake's head was nearly on the ground now, and certainly the back of the armor was. Mao Mao's face was alongside the blade reflecting his shining sharp teeth in another round of lightning and thunder very close together now. Again he could feel, smell, and downright taste that putrid breath, and just when he felt that the blade was about to do its worse, Coby tried to prepare himself for the unavoidable eternal battle. He wished now that he had not wished for, so much that he was beginning to cry and choke, but then quite suddenly Mao Mao's eyes released his.
Mao Mao flung his head up and look behind Orangusnake.
"What's that?!" he shouted as he thrust his finger rigidly forward.
"What?!" wailed Orangusnake popping his head upright expecting to see the cloaked specter of death with his scythe.
"Psyche!" said Mao Mao.
With that Orangusnake was flung right off the edge of the cliff and into the water below to the sound of deranged laughter from beyond the grave.
While Mao Mao was at it, he took his gleaming katana (or glorified glow stick) and made a deft and clever move that sliced the Ruby Pure Heart from the Sky Pirate's ship and sent it flying back to King Snugglemagne's castle. Although Mao Mao could not see it from there, the Ruby Pure Heart landed perfectly, though a little heavily, into the right position. King Snugglemagne himself had woken with a fearful start in bed with wood dust from the ceiling shaking onto his fine quilt and sheets, but otherwise everything was in order.
Mao Mao wiped some spittle he had gotten on the corner of his mouth and then slipped Geraldine back into her sheath. His eyes were back to normal and although his fur was still ruffled and muddy it did not look so dead. A sprinkling of rain began to fall, and he wrapped himself up in his ripped cape.
"Hmm," he said to himself in the silence.
Even the wind had stopped, and the Orangusnake's crew had long ago fled, so it was just him, and for some miles too.
"I wonder if I overdid it," Mao Mao muttered. Then he shrugged. "Oh, well. Too late now. I wonder where Badgerclops and Adorabat got to."
Down in the river Orangusnake flailed his arms, gasping and sputtering and making queer orangutan cries and snaky gasps, until the rain began to fall. He stopped and realized that he was not very deep in and that his legs were sinking in river slime. Looking around, it seemed that he had not gone far unless the spirit world looked exactly the same as the land of the living.
He scratched his head and stood up.
"What just happened?" he demanded.
A frog made a ribbit on the edge of the river, and the Coby-half blinked with more confusion than the Tanner-half who looked rather content despite the sogginess of the situation.
As Mao Mao made his way back to Pure Heart Valley's Sheriff Office he could not help but notice the sound of loud, struggling, child-like grunts. As he followed it, he also noticed the whine of videogame music a little out of place in the pattering of rain. Then he saw the electronic glow. At that point it did not take long to see the cage with Badgerclops in it playing video games as he reached a paw for the last cookie provided for him.
Adorabat was tugging at various parts of the cage and trying in vain to bend bars with her small body or dig underneath the cage with a plastic beach shovel.
"Yeah, you're doin' great, Adorabat," said Badgerclops with his mouth full of cookie. "Keep it up."
"Grrr! Why don't you help me!?" Adorabat snapped back.
Mao Mao stepped into the light of the screen. Both Adorabat and Badgerclops turned shocked faces to their friend as if they were staring right at a ghost.
On the television screen the announcer cried, "K. O.!" But no one heeded it.
"Mao Mao?" Badgerclops asked prying the bars apart rather easily as he stepped out into the rain to see Mao Mao up close.
"Hey, guys," Mao Mao muttered awkwardly. "What're y'all doin' exactly? I just got rid of the Sky Pirates and—"
"MAO MAO!" shrieked Adorabat; she flung her body onto the side of his head in a tight embrace.
"Dude! Like, where have you been?" demanded Badgerclops, but he soon was grabbing Mao Mao too.
Together the three guardians of Pure Heart Valley had a great team hug.
"Well, it's kind of a long story," said Mao Moa once Adorabat was on his shoulder more than on his face. "I guess we can talk about it outa the rain, though." He frowned and his eyes shifted to the cage. "Badgerclops?"
"Yeah?"
"Is that a game with a hacked Purpluigi in it?"
Badgerclops grinned hopefully and very broadly, "Yeah!?"
Mao Mao's eyes lowered with disapproval as the hug broke up.
"We're not bringing that," said Mao Mao quickly.
"Aw man…" grumbled Badgerclops, but he did not push about it.
Instead they all three headed towards Pure Heart Valley. When they reached the Sheriff's Office, none of them seemed to think it strange that the lights were on inside. But then Adorabat and Badgerclops were so excited to see Mao Mao alive that they had forgotten to tell the cat that the Sky Pirate's ship still had his Aero-Cycle and half the possessions of Pure Heart Valley too. They were all just happy that the rain had stopped and that the moon was shining. Most of all they were happy that they were together again. They were laughing and joking about all that had happened as Mao Mao opened the front door and they stepped inside.
Then Mao Mao stopped abruptly to see leisurely on the couch Pinky dressed in a Western outfit glaring at them as he looked up from the TV. Canned laughter echoed from an ancient sitcom rerun.
"Whadya want? It's too late for sheriff's work at this hour!" growled Pinky impatiently. "Take it somewhere else."
Mao Mao bristled. His green eyes narrowed. Throwing back his head and his arms, he shouted furiously with a stomp of his foot, "Get outa my Sheriff's Office!"
OWARI