(It's short and got gay toward the end, sue me)

Chapter 2

Foggy Foreshadows on McWellington Island!

His hair was cut completely, back to its old do, his beard and mustache now just a mustache. His old ripped up clothes were replaced with a fancy red robe with the casual wear scarf stuffed in the front collar. Those clothes were red as well. Mario was given a fresh new red hat, and clean, stainless gloves. This was the way Winston imagined Mario to be.

Mario gave himself a look over, and then arched an eyebrow.

"Why these clothes?" he asked.

Winston, smoking his bubble pipe, chuckled.

"Such is the clothing of the famous," said he simply.

Mario shrugged and assumed a seat in a big fluffy chair in the massive library they were in. He took a good look around- shelves upon shelves of every genre known to man and several known to monkey were placed neatly, the backs of the bindings facing outward for convenient browsing. They were all placed alphabetically. Such organization…

"Mario, tomorrow, I am going to go to the Rich Hooey Society's weekly Wednesday Gathering," Winston began, "and I would like for somebody to accompany me. I have never had the pleasure of anybody coming with me anywhere on this island aside from my fellow Hooeys. And the presence of a hero makes me feel rather…" The Hooey Leader stopped short to find the word he wanted. When he finally found it, he continued, "Well defended, if that is the correct inoffensive term.

"Are you up for it, Mario?"

Mario gave it a small moment's thought. He already came off on a bad start with Winston… and he didn't exactly like Winston's such… prominent… nature to begin with. Nonetheless, he gave his response.

"I'll consider it," was his reply.

The dinner bell then rang. Ansis had the pure platinum dinner triangle, and was banging it about with a random 14 karat gold fork.

"Your soup for your possible cold is ready, Mr. Mario," the tiger demon said dully before heading back to his room, flicking his tail annoyed.

"Where's your kitchen?" Mario asked Winston, to which the rich man only answered with a simple puff of his bubble pipe and a point of his finger toward anywhere. Did he want to test Mario's exploration skills? The plumber wasn't sure. He didn't know the mansion like the back of his hand like how Winston did.

"I need a better answer than that, Mr. Hooey," Mario seethed, trying to keep himself controlled as he said it.

"One hint: Follow that big, bulbous nose of yours, and your soup will be right there," Winston said.

Like that helped…

Rolling his eyes, Mario simply walked to where he thought the dining room was… crossing through the large scarlet carpeted, brightly illuminated foyer of the mansion. From the door he walked out of, on either side was a staircase with golden railings supported by thin bramble designed bars, made entirely out of silver, and at the beginning of the railings was that usual thick pole with the weird design on top of it- in this case, a model of a golden pyramid with a Kingdom Coin sculpted on all four sides of the top. Mario took note that all thick poles had that same pyramid at the top, but didn't doubt for one second that the design on top of every pyramid was the same. There had to be some sort of connection with their designs, if that were the case…

Snapping back into reality, focusing more on his hunger than the rich palace he was obviously having his face rubbed in, Mario set forth to where he thought the dining room would be, through a large arc of a door down a hall lined with more suits of armor and, on the other side, a large flag draped just above the doorway to a room where Mario could see… a long wooden table and some fancy seats. In the middle of it, sat a random, wholesome bowl of chicken noodle soup. Mario smiled, licking his chops. He was feeling sort of feverish…

After the soup, Mario felt sort of full and sleepy. He patted his stomach, now satisfied that he had a good filling meal rather than killed wildlife, eaten raw. He felt luxurious now.

A young, fine looking maid, dressed in a French maid outfit, with a decently long skirt (this one was taught manners) came on her way with a tray meant for dirty dishes. She was a leopardess demon, and she seemed to have a bright and cheery aura about her.

"Hello, guest Mario, how did you enjoy your… soup?" the demon asked, flicking her leopard's tail teasingly. Her long pause told Mario that soup wasn't exactly the best dish tonight. Someone may have spit in it… or worse… put an anchovy in there somewhere.

"I did… I tasted something salty in there though," Mario told her.

"Oh. Ansis doesn't like anybody at all… so he ordered the head cook to casually drop an anchovy in there," the leopardess replied. He made a face… and then changed it to something satisfying… anchovies never hurt. Mario turned in his seat and took a close look at her.

"Never caught your name."

"Mine? Oh. It's Kira!" she replied cheerfully, finally grabbing up the bowl and putting it on the tray. "Why do you ask?"

"Curiosity. In case I may need something, such as… oh, I don't know… more food? A pizza? Maybe even some tacos?" he answered. Those needs were definitely true. He could sure go for a taco pizza right now…

Kira laughed.

"You're funny, Mario," she complimented, starting to roll the tray away to the kitchen. "It's no wonder Winston respects you."

Winston respected Mario because he was funny? That… was odd. There had to be another reason, aside from Mario being a hero of many lands everywhere and him apparently being funny. He yawned and then stretched out his limbs, staying seated a little longer here in the dining room. He gave it a good look around. It was a simple, chestnut brown painted room with three brightly lit chandeliers above the long wooden table. The head chair, where Winston apparently sat, was the most decorative of all the regular looking chairs. It looked like a classic king's throne, with a fancy cloth making up the general sitting area while the framing of the chair, made entirely out of gold and designed with a Gaelic sense of art, stuck out and shone the most in the bright candlelight. He could have sworn the chandeliers ran on electric…

He didn't bother to give the rest of the classy room a look, as he got up and left for the library where Winston sat still. His large book wide open in his lap, numbers were written on one page, and paragraphs on the other one. It had to be an accountancy book… what else were rich people reading about?

Mario took a seat. Cleared his throat. Drummed his fingers on the arms of the chair, the drum-like noises echoing off the quiet walls and shelves of the equally quiet room. But that agitated Winston during his reading.

With a heavy slam of the accountancy book, Winston glared at Mario and seethed, "Must you do that annoying racket?!"

At once, Mario stopped. His eyes went wide like a deer in the headlights; Winston looked about ready to throw Mario out of the house as fast as he accepted him!

"Go right to your slumber quarters now, blue collar!" Winston snarled. "Allow me to read in peace!"

Mario only shrugged, getting up and then waved casually before leaving the library to his assigned "quarters."

Funny how a rich person can give you quarters…

A thick fog covered the entire island of McWellington. The island was named such because Winston owned it, and it was under his family name. No storm was coming to a head, no rain was predicted, no strong winds… just a rolling fog, thick enough to get you lost in your own backyard, on your own deck. Seagulls called no more- they were in their nests sleeping anyway. The entire area was much too quiet…

A somewhat tall dark figure eyed the window of the room where the man was sleeping. Surely, this had to be the place. He was only dressed in a very long trench coat, heavy boots, black pants and black torso armor. His red eyes bore into that window, and his black wolf tail wagged slowly. He sniffed some power coming off this guy. He was human, but a very strong one at that…

"You're back, alright," the man said. "But he'll be back too… and he'll try with this universe what he did with the other one…"

He turned around, toward where the building of the Rich Hooey Society would be. Out of his pocket, the wolf demon held up a small red and white polka dotted seed.

"This may be a ridiculous creature to summon, but it'd have to suffice," he said aloud, pocketing the seed. "Hell has more fearsome creatures than what this seed could produce…" From his other pocket, he pulled out a small flask. It contained some kind of poison that could alter the genes of the seed he had. He plopped it in the poison and swirled it around a bit, watching as it sizzled in delight, changing the seed's very DNA. Altering the final product ahead of time for his pleasure, and… to see if he was right about the power he sniffed.

The poison changed color; it was time to take the seed out. The demon did so, dumping the rest of that poison out, then just holding the seed there with his thumb and index finger. He bent down and drew a summoning circle in the dirt, writing in the demon language where he wanted this seed to go, then placed it in the middle of the circle, watching as a small purplish-blue light swallowed the tiny thing and brought it to wherever the demon wanted it to go.

"Not the type of plant I'd like to grow, but at least when it does grow, it'll look more like a Hell creature than a… silly plant whose potential could be questioned."

He looked around, the only noticeable feature on his dark figure right now were his glowing red eyes. He blinked them once and they turned gold.

"I'm done with this power for now," he voiced. "Now we wait… are you truly him?"

With that final comment, he desummoned back to whence he came…

Plumber's Log

1/28/07

I have a new log book now for you, my precious Plumber's Logs. This island ain't half bad. I mean, yeah, there are the downsides such as how stuck up Winston can be… but at heart, he's a good man. He took me in, for Stars' sake! I can't wait to see what this Rich Hooey Convention is like. Probably everyone running at everyone else, waving their fingers and yelling at the top of their lungs, "HooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooo!!"

Wait… that's if they're on each other's lawns…

Oh well… wish me luck, Logbook!