The door to Yoshi's room slammed open, revealing in its entrance Yoshi himself. He looked dead tired, the burden of exhaustion exerting its weight through the sag of his eyelids, the hunch of his back. Yet there was no denying the expression of triumph that bestowed on his worn face a lingering smile, a chest still distended with the bursting success of a day well-spent. From his right arm he brushed off several petals of pink and white; from his left shoe he deposited a layer of grime on the floor. In four woozy steps he was at the side of his large, circular dirt bed – and then he was gone, allowing gravity to collapse his eyelids and rest him on his belly. A bubble of snot issued from his left nostril, inflating and deflating according to the rise and fall of his chest, the rate of which gradually declined as the seconds grew into minutes.

For the first hour of the night, Yoshi slept soundly, serene smile still imparting curvature on his mouth.


When he awoke, it was due to a harsh beam of light that penetrated the flaps of his eyes to constrict the pupils within.

Yoshi groaned and threw his arm over his eyes, but it was too late – the sleep was gone, he was awake. With his other hand he groped the flesh of his belly. It rumbled in contentment, the acid teeth of his stomach still happily munching the ample supper he had stuffed himself with – well, it couldn't have been longer than an hour and thirty minutes, if he had to gauge based on how full he was feeling.

So if morning was still a good six to seven hours away, where the hell was that light coming from…?

"Wake up."

Yoshi shot up and made a good effort in opening his eyes, though he had to settle for a heavy squint and a couple of hapless blinks for a few seconds. As his pupils shrank accordingly and his corneas took over his retinas, the shapeless abstraction of color gradually took on a more concrete form, and with its increasing familiarity Yoshi's disbelief could only grow, taking palpable effects through the knitted confusion of his eyelids, the descent of the lower jaw to the general area of his chest – until finally the object shifted into complete focus, and Yoshi had no choice but to believe what he was seeing.

"You're up. About time," grumbled the Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron, adjusting a dial on its chest so that the white light radiating from its entire body finally lowered in intensity – a gesture Yoshi would have appreciated before, when the incandescence had been needles to his eyes.

Anger and exasperation dispelled the confusion as Yoshi finally figured out what was going on, and in a sharp voice he called out, "Very funny, Ness. Why don't you come out and shove your stupid Monkeytron up your ass now?"

In a flash of movement the toy was on Yoshi's chest. The dinosaur let out a small shriek as he fell back on his hands, while the Monkeytron grabbed a fistful of the flesh around Yoshi's neck and shouted, "What did you say? Say it again! Call me 'stupid' one more time, I dare you! Say it again, say it again –"

Yoshi grabbed the monkey, wrenched him off his chest, and threw him across the room. It bounced twice off his bed and rolled across the floor, stopping just before it hit the wall with its eyes dead set on Yoshi's. He watched as the Monkeytron picked itself up, tilting its head left and right and testing the joints of its arms and legs with rhythmic swings and bends, before finally uttering, with a shaky voice and finger, "What. The. Hell. Are you?"

"Not very bright, are you?" the Monkeytron sneered as it began its slow, calculated approach back to Yoshi's dirt bed. "What Ness sees in such a 'dumb dinosaur' – his words – as yourself is beyond me. He's mentioned my name several times already, has he not?" The Monkeytron struck a noble pose with its arm bent towards it sides and its head turned to some faraway mysterious distance. "I am Super Duper Ultra Mega Mecha Monkeytron!"

Though the fear and the panic had yet to release their vicious grip from his throbbing heart and wild mind, Yoshi still felt a drop of defiance dilute the emotions of distraught and incite within him the tiniest spark of anger. Dumb dinosaur?

"So – so, let me get this straight," Yoshi muttered as he rubbed his eyes with his hand, the pacing of his breathing slowly resetting back to normal. "You're alive."

"If by 'alive' you mean I can walk and talk and can think independent thoughts of my own, then yes, I am very much 'alive'," said the Monkeytron in its deep, gritty voice, that affirmed to Yoshi more and more of how impossible it would be for Ness to replicate.

"Okay," Yoshi said as he threw down his hand and peered at the action figure with a piercing stare of his own. "How?"

"I come from a game where crazed street signs and mad taxi cabs can think for themselves and make rational decisions based on their choices. Why do you question my sentience?"

"Fair point," Yoshi muttered in grudging reluctance, before quickly dropping it in favor of another attempt at sounding accusatory and in-the-right. "What the hell are you doing here? Shouldn't you be playing with Ness or something?"

The Monkeytron did not answer, but rather countered with a question of his own.

"Tell me, dumb dinosaur – are you jealous of me?"

"Of what, your cocksucking blowgun?" Yoshi smirked. He had been silly to react with such tremendous fear, even in the shock of the awakening, for the toy could not be taller than a mere six inches – a stomp away from being reduced to a mere heap of plastic and metal. In the light of his newfound confidence, Yoshi spat with vehemence uncharacteristic of his usual, happy self, as though to redeem himself in front of the silent eyes that judged his bravery.

The Monkeytron's answer, however, proved as perplexing as ever.

"No. I speak of my friendship with Ness. Surely you covet it, surely you desire such strong, brotherly bond that could never exist between he and your sad, pathetic self?"

Yoshi could only stare, he was so surprised.

"You're – you're kidding me, right? You're not being serious?" he finally spoke up, barely holding back a giggle.

"I assure you, I have never been more serious in my life."

"Right…" Yoshi wiped away a smile with a brush of his hand, cleared his throat, and tried his best to speak as forward as possible. "Listen, I don't know how to put this nicely, so I won't. Ness and I are best buds. We've been best buds since the end of 64, and we'll be best buds forever and ever – and no one, especially not some cheap, poorly-designed, delusional chunk of plastic who somehow believes it's the greatest cyborg of this universe –" Yoshi buried his mouth in his hand and burst into a brief explosion of laughter "– is going to take that away from us." Yoshi concluded his speech with a smirk and a rap of his knuckles against the monkey's head, prompting the toy to duck and swerve away. "So, long story short, no, I am not jealous of whatever illusory friendship you believe you have with Ness. Does that answer your question? Yes? Can I go back to sleep now, please?"

And with that, Yoshi turned away with his arms crossing his chest, flushed with the triumph of a swift, decisive victory with which he was sure had crushed any hopes of a retaliation from the losing side.

"Such confidence," murmured the voice behind him.

Yoshi turned, the triumph quickly ebbing to be replaced by – fury, frustration, impatience. It was the tone behind the words that set him off, a tone of condescending amusement that quite clearly hinted the certainty with which it blindly and incorrigibly swept aside Yoshi's flawless argument. Yoshi met the cold, unblinking stare with a fiery glare of his own, struggling between the choices of continuing the debate or dismiss it entirely when he next opened his mouth. He made his decision, and was about to voice the latter, when there came the infuriatingly well-timed interruption of the monkey, this time put in the form of a challenge.

"Well, then. If you are truly confident that Ness will prefer you over me as his best friend, then you surely wouldn't mind a little game? A challenge, if you will, that will once and for all confirm which of us two Ness holds dearer and closer to his heart?"

Again Yoshi's only response for the first few seconds was that of silence: Lower jaw stretched open in disbelief, the lids of his eyes cutting them in shapes that communicated the confusion with which he regarded Monkeytron's words.

"Okay, okay. Fine. Whatever you want," Yoshi finally huffed, throwing up his arms in mock defeat. "We'll have your dumb challenge come morning, so for now, I'd really just appreciate it if you could leave me alone and let me catch some Z's, alright?"

The words possessed a note of finality that left no stronghold for another argument, and to bolster the end of the conversation Yoshi made to stand up and open the door.

"Excellent," Monkeytron whispered, stepping closer just as Yoshi was about to unbend his knees. "Then, let the game begin – now."

And before he knew it, before he could even move a single molecule of his body – the Monkeytron launched itself straight at his chest. Another flash of movement, and Yoshi was on his knees, his eyes as round as saucer plates as he gazed down, silent and still from the shock, at his chest – the right side of his chest, to be exact, the flesh of which was currently impaled by the razor sword of Monkeytron's tail.

"Haaa…" Yoshi breathed, struggling at even just that – breathing, to fill his lungs with air and expel it at the slow, long drag he desired. There was no pain, no agony – but there was some kind of heavy stupor that had started with his head and now, quickly spread to his arms and legs, so that he was quite incapable of throwing off the attacker as he rightfully would have. In a slow, heavy drawl, he exhaled, "What… Are you… Doing…?"

"I am injecting your heart with a serum that will bind to your blood, bones, fats, and muscles and turn them into cotton stuffing," replied the Monkeytron – cold, quick, indifferent, as though a seasoned doctor detailing the procedures with which he would operate on his anxious patient. "Your skin, too, will change, and your exterior casing will soon become that of felt textile – very good material for dolls, trust me, for it moulds, stretches, and fits any shape you need much easier than other fabric textiles."

Though his physical response was slow, Yoshi's brain had no trouble understanding the words uttering from the insane monkey's mouth. Two and a fraction of a seconds' delay later, Yoshi rumbled with a muffled quality of a voice, "Whaa-aa-aat?"

"I suppose I should apologize. I neglected to mention that this challenge which you so confidently accepted will be played on my grounds. The grounds of a toy, that is." With a smile that seemed far more evil and conniving than that frequently worn by its real-life brethren, the Monkeytron finally pulled its lance-like tail free from Yoshi's chest, somehow not even leaving the tiniest hole in its exit. "At any rate, it's too late to go back on the challenge now. Your metamorphosis into a doll should begin quite soon – look, it has even begun now, look at you!" screamed the Monkeytron with ecstatic exuberance as it pulled back its tail (the tip of which momentarily dripped with some purple liquid before it sheathed it) and pointed fanatically to various parts of Yoshi's body. "Look at you, you're changing! You're changing!"

And changing he was, as Yoshi's physical entirety throbbed with tuft-shaped bulges, from the length of his arm to the girth of his belly. Yoshi swelled and swelled, every single part of his body becoming bloated with the abundance of fluff. His hands became mitten-like in shape and function, losing the gaps between that defined his fingers. His shoes, somehow, turned soft and plushy and surrendered its leathery consistency to match the felt that was consuming his entire body. Pretty soon he lost his balance and fell on his rear, the fats of his rump only existing now as a collection of cotton. Perhaps in overwhelming surprise of watching his own existence suffer the impossible transformation from organic to inorganic, Yoshi's eyes bulged like great hemispheres from their sockets. Then they bulged out again, thrusting out further this time. And they bulged out a third and final time, until with a loud, moist squelch! his eyes popped from his sockets, completely displaced from their rightful places in his head by a flood of white cotton now frothing in copious amounts from his eyeholes.

"That reminds me," said the Monkeytron as it kicked the eyeballs to the direction of their owner. It clicked a switch on its left arm, revealing a sleek, cobalt-blue barrel of a gun, which fired, on his mental command, a beam of light that completely engulfed Yoshi and his eyes in an emanating sheen of blue. Within seconds the Inky Dinky Shrink Ray proved as reliable as ever, the top of Yoshi's plushy head no longer even peaking over the Monkeytron's.

At this point, Yoshi's transformation into a doll was more or less done – swollen, immobile, hot and stuffy, Yoshi tried desperately to move his body, swing his legs, wriggle his hands – anything, but the only part of him that moved was his tongue, swaying in the displaced air of Monkeytron's movement, soft, woolen, sticking out slightly from a mouth overflowing with cotton and just begging to be pulled. The monkey, however, ignored the invitation, and proceeded to click the switch on his right arm. The Vacuum Gun roared its voracious appetite to consume, rearing its ugly head from the confines of the Monkeytron's fist and consuming the stray eyeballs on the bed. Blind and paralyzed, Yoshi could only scream within his own dark hell as he first felt the tube brutally ram into his left eye socket and suck up the gray matter that remained inside his cottony skull. He was afforded no break when the Vacuum Gun was finally pulled from his cranium, for less than second later the same procedure was repeated with his mouth, and Yoshi felt his chest and belly deflate from the loss of the mass that had not turned to cotton.

"I used the chemicals in your intestines to turn all your internal organs into eggs," boomed the Monkeytron's voice in the coffin of darkness a minute after the vacuuming was finally over. "You will be needing them to live again when you turn back to normal. If you turn back to normal." There was an unpleasant cackle, and before a single thought of protest could burgeon in the wild planes of his consciousness, Yoshi felt the exterior of his stomach being ripped open. "This egg contains your brain, your eyes, your lungs, and your entire nervous system," continued the voice, and Yoshi felt a familiar sphere nestle its way through the cotton of his belly. "This egg contains your heart, your liver, your pancreas, and kidneys." Another uncomfortable insertion into his makeshift womb. "And this egg, finally, contains your entire digestive system, from your teeth to your two stomachs to the heap of your intestines." A final push, and then Yoshi felt a few tight pats sealing back the pouch of his stomach.

It was the final straw, the last strain his mind – wherever his mind was now – could withhold before crumbling into the dust of the unconscious earth. As Yoshi, finally, surrendered to the slumber enticed by the deepest, most darkest hell anyone could possibly be made to live, he heard – the words becoming increasingly fainter, more incoherent in its meaning – "Now all that's left to do is to sew buttons into your eyes, and we're ready to get this game started, once and for all. 'Best buds forever', you say? I suppose… We'll see about that, won't we? Yes we will. Yes, we will."