§8 Vice
"So, this is the end of the line, is it?" said Sonic with a shrug. "That's kinda disappointing."
Maybe he had a right to be disappointed. After tracking the march of flat men all the way back to Hyrule Field, Sonic was standing at the foot of a completely bog-standard oak tree, surrounded for miles by nothing but gently waving grass and the occasional pony-sized rodent. Apart from the fact that Shadow had to stand several metres away from the tree, it was another boring spot in Hyrule Field, notable only in that it was away from the eyes of any LOVE guards.
"'Kinda disappointing'?" echoed Shadow, covering his eyes. "Sonic, that tree and the area around it is giving off higher energy readings than all the Chaos Emeralds I'm carrying! It's almost blinding!"
"So, what do we do now?"
"You can try and use your key if you want. Personally I'd wait until the others got here."
Sonic looked up at the tree, full of leaves and branches and chirruping birds. How was he meant to use the key anyway? The others were not meant to be arriving for the best part of six days. There could be no harm in trying it out. What could possibly go wrong?
And then he stopped. Hero though Sonic was, he knew all too well the danger of those five innocuous-sounding words. They meant, "Oh this looks nice, I think I'll just AAARGH WHAT THE HELL IS THAT AAARGH IT'S GOT ME AAAAAARGH".
"So, when do the others get here?" he asked, jogging on the spot.
"Five and a half days, Sonic. Five and a half days."
o o o
Time passes.
Sometimes it passes slowly, and sometimes not so much. When one is in one's first term of university, there are bops to go to, new alcoholic drinks to try and several shades of green to vomit, and somewhere in all this time one has to do one's deadline work, time passes remarkably swiftly. "I've got ages!" becomes "Where did Tuesday spring from?" in the blink of an eye, followed by its good pal "I've been up until 7 a.m. finishing this essay." When one is waiting six days for one's allies to return from various corners of the globe, with nothing to do but hope that neither the LOVE nor IPAF decides to go nuclear in that time, time crawls along on its belly, stopping every so often to have its hair done and take its mother to Sunday lunch.
After five minutes, Sonic shouted definitively that an hour had passed and that he was hungry. After ten, Shadow's stomach gave a hearty rumble and the two headed to Hyrule Castle Town. After thirty, they were running out again, hoping to shake the Moblin guards as swiftly as possible. After an hour had actually passed, both were swearing never to go to Hyrule Castle Town ever again in a café hundreds of miles away.
Thus they spent five miserable days, sleeping in the open, snatching a bite to eat at every available juncture and otherwise being bored out of their skulls. The life of the outlaw, far from being the glamourous world of the movies or even the world of fear and exhaustion and lack of decent rest that it frequently is in real life, was just dull. Any LOVE cronies they did accidentally disturb were all too easy to escape from. It felt as if the LOVE were not trying any more.
And time pa-
"Sonic!"
It was nighttime on the seventh day after the group had split up, and they were sleeping under the stars near the oak. Sonic felt someone shaking him from his rough grass bed, and opened his eyes slowly. He instantly shut them again.
"Shadow, why have you turned Super at this time of night?" he groaned.
"I'm sensing cyan energy!" said the brightly glowing Shadow. "I'm Super so that whoever it is can see us and come here."
"Or avoid you, thinking you're a LOVE patroller. Who is it?"
They remained still, the only sound the wind bothering the grasses. There was something else, too, on the very edge of hearing, a humming sound that was quickly leaving the edge of hearing and becoming audible as an engine noise that was really very close all of a sudden.
"Falcon," said Sonic, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.
The Captain was clearly taking no chances. The Blue Falcon zoomed into Shadow at high speed, sending him flying. Then it looped back at came to a stop close to Sonic's resting place. The lid opened with a clunk and the Captain, back in racing uniform procured from a Port Town outfitter, clambered out carrying a sleeping Peach. He laid her gently down upon the grass before setting his fists ablaze and staring around defiantly.
"Come on, glowy!" he yelled into the crisp night air. "I know you're there! Trying to lure me into your little trap, huh?"
"It's Shadow with a yellow paint job," said/yawned Sonic.
The Captain turned his head at the sound of the familiar voice, meaning that he missed the sight of the charging yellow mammal that propelled him skywards in turn with a cry of dismay.
"WHAT IN FUCK'S NAME IS YOUR PROBLEM?" cried Shadow after him.
"Don't shout," said Sonic. "You'll wake Peach."
Shadow's mouth became a perfect circle. The emeralds sprang from his black-again fur and concealed themselves as, his vision good enough in the moonlight, he ran over to check on the sleeping princess. He need not have bothered: she was quite clearly dead to the world, and determined to stay that way for a while.
"Where's that yellow prick? I'll turn him into luminescent steaks!"
Sonic summoned up the energy he had not quite recovered and threw himself between the Captain and his quarry. "Whoa there, Sparrow! You crashed into Shadow first. He had a right to be pissed off."
The Captain's face contorted noticeably at the mention of his nickname, but his anger at Shadow subsided, replaced by a combination of joy at seeing an old friend alive and annoyance at seeing that not only had the old friend finished his quest before he did, but had had time to recover and start spouting awful sobriquets again.
"Sonic!" he said, emphasising the former emotion. "Great to see you, buddy? You got the key?" He extended a hand.
Sonic took a look at the hand. While he would rather not let his paw, useful as it was, succumb to a crushing, which given the Captain's brawny arms and Sonic's reuse of the nickname seemed inevitable, to refuse to shake would either be seen as hostile or, if the Captain guessed correctly, a sign of weakness. Sonic caved in to accepting the pain, and tried to mask the agony that rippled up his right arm with a smile.
"Not bad," he said through clenched teeth. "We got the key, yeah. Man, you would not believe the adventures we went through to find it! Crazy stuff!"
The grip was released, and Sonic tried to massage some life back into the mangled appendage.
"Oh, I think I can believe them," said the Captain, folding his arms. "I had a pretty crazy time myself."
"Oh yeah?" Sonic's eyes hardened a scintilla. "Did you fight two mountaineers and a fat penguin on an avalanche?"
"No, but I did fight fifty robots outside a garage."
"Fifty? I can take fifty in my sleep! We dealt with hundreds, and a Project Z clone at the same time!"
"You wanna talk about Project Z clones?" said the Captain, fists clenched. "Try fighting two of them, on a spaceship!"
"I fought three of them, on a mountain, and a giant dragon!"
Sonic's desire to sleep was gone, replaced by his desire to outmatch the Captain in reports of bravado and derring-do. On they bragged, each telling their story with slight amendments that became big amendments into the small hours, and as the sun rose over the gently snoring forms of Shadow and Peach their tales were completely unrecognisable. The Captain was just describing in detail how he had fought the ten foot tall Wolf, armed with two laser cannons, while hanging onto the Great Fox's wing with one hand, when there was a green flash and Zelda appeared. She looked around, smiled gratefully at having found everyone and sat down heavily, looking straight ahead but not seeing anything.
"Zelda!" said Sonic, and then in a less enthusiastic tone of voice, "Are you all right? Do you have the key?"
"Wario's bringing it," said Zelda dumbly, her head on one side. "I warped back to fetch it, but… I sensed that he did not want to be disturbed."
Sonic nodded, a bit confused, and settled down to eat the bacon and tomatoes the Captain had brought.
They ate, they talked, they eventually roused Zelda from her semi-comatose state and then those who had bragged for half the night slept, while those who were asleep woke up. Peach sat down next to Zelda, turning her back firmly on the Captain (whose snores put her in mind of a series of rockets launching), and they discussed their adventures. Both got the feeling the other was hiding something, but as each was hiding some things herself neither wished to pry. This resulted in quite a few awkward silences, which Shadow, standing purposefully apart from the group but not quite far enough to miss any conversation, did nothing to help with. Such was the state of affairs until about eleven of the clock, when Yoshi and Snake arrived.
Even with his hair cut, the explosive-laden Snake was heavy, and Yoshi was used to being carried on a litter more than he was to carrying. He dumped his burden ignobly on the grass near the princesses and helped himself to breakfast, skirting around the bacon but devouring the tomatoes with gusto. He was still involved with this activity when a small whirlwind reached the group, unfolded itself into Meta Knight and proceeded to brood, broodingly, brooding that was only interrupted by a table with Pit on it cantering towards him at high speed and stopping abruptly, throwing the angel off and into Meta Knight.
"I'm the son of a goddess," burbled Pit.
"Good for you," growled a voice from beneath him.
Zelda had said that Wario would return at twelve, so they spent the time until then comparing keys and relating tales. Pit had fallen into a hunched sleep next to the Captain, exhausted after clinging to a table for two days; it had given him exactly ten hours in the middle to sleep before emitting an injured screeching that only ceased when he re-boarded. Yoshi began to pine for his empty tummy as those who were awake watched the hands on Snake's watch, crawling their way around the circle towards and past twelve. Twelve oh five, twelve ten… People were starting to give Zelda suspicious looks.
"Midna…" she grumbled, clenching her fists.
"Yes?"
Zelda jumped and spun around. The voice had come out of nowhere, but then a black hole opened in the sky and, with a loud "whoosh", rained down specks of dark matter that hit the ground and coalesced into two people only Zelda had seen before. There was a tall, dark and immensely beautiful woman, holding the hand of a short, well-built man with a roguish air and a look of disorientation that he swiftly dispelled.
"'We need to return to Hyrule Field by midday,' she says," said the woman, glaring at Zelda. "Didn't think to say which part of Hyrule Field, did you? It's pretty huge!"
A gasp told Zelda that Snake had just made the connection between the handsome male and the missing member of the LOL. The others continued to observe with curious expressions, apart from Meta Knight whose face remained unchanged and unreadable beneath his mask.
"Now then," said Midna, turning to Wario, "have you got both keys?"
The penny, flung at the heads of the onlookers, dropped. Yoshi's mouth actually hung open; Sonic and the Captain, roused by the whooshing, were shocked into wakefulness; Peach just buried her head in her hands and gave an inaudible moan. Even Wario was more attractive than Mario now.
"Yes mama," said Wario with a roll of his eyes.
"Babe, if you're into mother-son role-playing you should have told me earlier."
They kissed with complete indifference to their spectator gallery, tongues merrily frolicking through each other's mouths and producing all kinds of wet noises. Zelda was too appalled by the blatant sexuality of the scene to feel pride in the astonished looks of her companions.
Shadow gave a throaty cough. "Hate to break up this happy reunion…"
"Keep your tail on, furry," said Midna having disengaged. "I'm just going." She stepped away from Wario, letting his hand drop from hers. "See you later, gorgeous." She blew him a kiss, and then she was shooting skywards, decomposing into a black gale that rushed east over the mountains.
"What… just happened?" asked the Captain.
"Shadow's right," said Meta Knight, still poker-faced. "It is time to act. We have our Keys."
Expressions of grim determination replaced those of surprise, Zelda's disgust and Wario's smugness. Five members of the LOL brought forth their SubSpace Keys, looking at them as if for the first time. Wario presented Zelda with her key with decorum, and it was taken with the same gravitas. Pit snored and turned over in his sleep.
"Time to save some heroes," said Sonic. "With the likes of Samus, the Ice Climbers, er… Mario… er… et cetera helping us, the LOVE is as good as history! Ladies, gentlemen, it's the moment we've all been waiting for: the moment where…"
"…you realise you have no idea what to do with the key?"
Sonic glared at Shadow. "I'll figure it out."
With an exaggerated swagger, Sonic approached the oak, key gripped firmly in his right glove. It looked just like any other oak: broad trunk, a head of green leaves, the odd acorn. Maybe there was a keyhole or something in the bark.
"There's a massive blob of purple energy right in front of you," said Shadow dully.
Sonic treated Shadow to another glare. He was three paces or so away from the trunk of the oak. As far as he could see, there was nothing between him and the tree. He took a quick step forward.
He was jerked back awkwardly as his right hand refused to follow. Tugging gently, Sonic found that the key seemed to be stuck in some invisible barrier. Stepping back, he looked at the key, then at the apparently empty space before him, and with a curious expression brought the key up to his face, pushed forward and turned clockwise.
It glowed blinding cyan, so brightly that Sonic had to shield his eyes. Purple ripples started to flow through space, making a low humming noise as they spread out from the key. Sonic had the feeling something was pushing against it, and opposed the force with both hands. The ripples became clearer and more frequent, and now there was a strong wind that was howling from the focus point that ruffled the hair of the onlookers and sent a peculiar chill through their bodies. The ripples had blurred into a wave of purple that extended from the key, and within the wave a portal began to open. Sonic continued to push against the repulsion with gritted teeth, and the portal yawned wider, larger than Sonic now, before it stopped. The wind died, the noise ceased and the repulsion withdrew so suddenly that Sonic almost fell face-first into the portal, large and purple before him.
"Hey!" he said, turning to the watching group with a foolish smile on his face. "I figured it out!"
o o o
It was time. The Dark Prison, the goal of the last week of trouble, danger and irregular sleeping patterns, lay before them, its mouth open like a basking shark waiting for its krill. (Technically it had snapped shut when Sonic walked away from it, but it was open to all intents and purposes.) All that remained was for the eight who would be entering to pluck up the courage to do so.
After some attempts to shake Pit awake, it was decided that he should be carried in by Yoshi, who had complained bitterly but in a language the people making the decision either could not or pretended not to understand. Remaining rations were further rationed, being divided up into roughly equal portions. Snake slung a bag full of berries from his shoulder and gave them to Yoshi, who from then on bore his burden with slightly better grace. When asked by Peach in concerned tones what he would eat, an action that only provoked the slightest of tics in Captain Falcon's face, Snake responded that he and Shadow would survive "off the fat of the land". Shadow shuddered and spat.
With the preparations complete, the Captain held up his key, pushed it towards the tree and rotated. The ripples, the humming, the wind: all was as before, right down to the re-opening of the portal. Grasping his glowing key firmly, the Captain stepped inside. Meta Knight was next, and as he entered his key started to glow too. Through they went, one after another like pairs of animals into Noah's Ark, until only those with names beginning with "s" remained. Sonic took his first step beyond the portal.
"Hey, Sonic!"
He spun round. While Shadow looked pointedly away, Snake was watching him with a slight smile.
"Don't keep us waiting, huh?"
And that was the happiest day of Sonic's life.
o o o
The other side of the portal was purple, misty and not very hospitable-looking. Purple platforms led into purple space, and the purple air felt light and insubstantial. Sonic took an experimental look back over his shoulder. Where the portal had been, there was now a massive purple double door, slammed shut and surrounded by tentacles over ten times as long as Sonic. The hedgehog shook his head at the designer's sense of décor (or lack thereof).
"Sonic!"
The voice that fell like a lead balloon into the silence was the Captain's, coming from further down the platforms. After a short jog, Sonic found him and the others, gathered in a sort of ring and looking anxious.
"There," said Zelda, looking at Meta Knight. "We're all here. Now let me go to him!"
Meta Knight nodded, or rather rocked back and forth. Zelda rushed away from Sonic, followed by everyone else.
"Not even a how-de-do?" said Sonic bitterly.
Within two steps he had forgiven them. He was standing in a long room, classified as such because unlike the platforms it had a ceiling between him and the massive expanse of stars in a purple sky, and walls between him and oblivion. Attached to each wall was a lilac container, of the kind housing Ness Z and Porky's other experiments, and inside each container was something attached to a number of wires, floating gently. Sonic peered into the nearest one. It contained a boy in a navy blue parka, holding a large wooden mallet.
"Hey!" he yelled. "It's Popo!"
No reply came. Looking around, Sonic saw that most people had found a preferred container. Zelda was leaning against the one containing Link, crying bitter tears over its glass. Peach was displaying a slightly more restrained attitude before her hero's chamber, big blue eyes welling up but not overflowing. Behind her stood Wario, twiddling his thumbs and looking awkwardly at his former rival. The Captain looked at the squat form of Olimar, shaking his head sadly; Meta Knight sat motionless before Kirby's vessel; and Pit, still half asleep, had made his teenager's way semi-consciously towards the lithe form of Samus.
Only Yoshi was not concentrating on any container in particular. He roved from one to the other, inspecting and pondering. Sonic came up to him.
"Hey, Yoshi," he said. "How're you doing?"
"I'm trying to discern the reason behind the secondary canisters. The forms within…"
"Yeah, fascinating isn't it?"
Sonic walked off to browse while Yoshi sighed and inspected the hairy form of Donkey Kong, contained in a jumbo canister. Next to him, an identical canister resided, and contained within it was another Donkey Kong. There was a major difference between the two, however: this second Donkey Kong had no bottom half. Instead of the ape's powerful gluteus maximus and disproportionately small lower limbs, there seemed to be two crudely drawn black legs. Yet as Yoshi looked, they started to flesh out. Fur sprang from the thighs, and they began to expand into three dimensions.
"Oh my Gods – it's the flat people!"
Sonic was staring in astonishment at the container between Link and the manifestation of Link's consciousness, existing as a glowing orb that presumably consisted of Ganondorf's magic. In the container, fixed to the same wires as any of the heroes, was one of the flat black shapes that the Flatzone had been churning out not so long before.
"We saw them coming from this gigantic factory on top of Icicle Mountain!" jabbered Sonic as the others crowded round. "They were made out of SubSpace, and then they… Whoa!"
The dimensions of the flat man were changing. His nose was shrinking, his arms were lengthening, his torso was getting broader. A greenish hue was beginning to replace the black. Yoshi nodded sagely from his vantage point. So that factory made the black men, presumably turning SubSpace into a form the machines could use, and then they were transferred here where they were made into Project Z clones. The Donkey Kong clone was now fully formed, and as Yoshi watched lights on the canister turned green, symbolising completion. The process seemed relatively quick, so why was the world not overrun by these clones?
He got his answer almost immediately. A red light turned on and the wires began to fizz, sending pulses of brightly coloured energy into the convulsing clone's brain. The ape trembled for a bit, before its head blew apart silently and the body became nothing but purple mist. Another red light marked "Defect" lit up, the mist was sucked from the fluid and another flat man slid silently in to take his predecessor's place.
Yoshi wished he had a notebook, and that he could write. So the majority of clones were defective. Quite the inefficient process if the LOVE was hoping to build up an army. If they had some way of improving it…
"Yoshi!"
Peach's wail came too late. Something heavy had landed on his ceremonial saddle, and placed its oddly cold hands over his eyes. All at once he felt a deep emptiness inside his brain, replaced almost immediately by a burning ball of pure rage that seeped through him, filling his body with anger and madness.
The seven onlookers could only look on as the man's hands blazed with purple energy. Even Sonic recognised who this was.
"It's him, Mario!"
The most iconic figure of all Nintendo, the greatest hero on the planet, some said in the galaxy. Not that he looked it – Mario was small and podgy, with an untidy moustache below a rounded nose. His outfit was no hero's, either: he wore a red cap with the letter "M" on, a red top and blue dungarees. He looked every inch the plumber he was, rather than the doctor he had tried to be, although neither had owned a pair of glowing cyan eyes.
His white gloves emerged from over Yoshi's eyes, which had turned bright red. Then the two charged.
"Look out!" yelled Pit.
Mario's hand glowed, and formed an orb of fire the same size as his head. The orb flashed towards the group of onlookers, who threw themselves clumsily out of the way. Wario was not quite quick enough and the burning ball ignited his trousers, sending him running around in panic.
Yoshi reached the heaps of fallen people and stuck his tongue out. It wrapped itself around Pit's head and sucked the yelling boy in to sample the delights of the dinosaur digestive system. Meta Knight, as always the first to recover, shot at Mario with his blade flashing, but Mario swung a yellow cape that turned him the other way and sent him flying towards the canisters. He barely avoided the fireball that followed, and failed entirely to avoid the thrown egg that knocked him unconscious. Pit emerged from the eggshell, in a state that was not much better.
Mario leapt from his dinosaur steed, who immediately fell to the ground, drained and unable to move. The gloved fist hissed down towards Peach, who just managed to roll away. They stood stationary for a moment, looking into each other's eyes; Peach's with terror, Mario's with the attempt of grasping something that kept eluding him. Then a ball of blue spikes whizzed into the side of Mario's head and knocked him sideways.
"Come on, plumber!" yelled Sonic. "Let's see how you take on the hero of Mobius!"
Mario shook his head and faced Sonic's spiny whirlwind down calmly. On impact, the plumber's entire body became metal, sending Sonic backwards with a "ping" and a cry of pain. The Captain was next, charging into Mario with a Falcon Kick that he easily jumped over, treating the Captain to a barrage of arrows Pit had meant for his quarry. A nozzle full of water appeared on Mario's back and kept Pit at bay with a stream of liquid, while the Captain's fist met a large mallet coming down. There was a sickening crunch and the Captain was knocked away.
"Is there anything this guy can't do?" he moaned from the ground.
Pit jumped up and rushed towards Mario with a hoarse cry. Zelda, who had been circling around the Captain looking for an opening, now did the same, her body enveloped in a blur of magic as she ran. When it faded, she gave a squeal and drew to a stop: Sheik's costume had not been fixed since the episode with the fake Ganondorf's sword, and on reflex she tried to cover her crotch and chest with her hands. Then she was hit in the face by the screaming body of Pit.
Mario looked around in search of fresh blood, panting only slightly. Left to fight were Sonic, recovered and charging up a spin attack; Wario, who had finally managed to extinguish his burning bottom; and Peach, who lay utterly still, doing nothing but watching.
Mario's eyes lingered for a moment too long on Peach, allowing Sonic to hit him in the face with another hit-and-run attack. Then Wario was on him, a bit quicker with his dodges following his training but with an equally powerful punch. Mario danced around his rival's haymakers, keeping an eye on Sonic as the hedgehog rushed in again. Leaping backwards, Mario charged his fist with purple fire and whacked the spinning Mobian into Wario's face, sending him flying back. Mario followed this up with a few good punches that rendered Wario unconscious and removed a tooth for good measure.
Sonic uncurled, extinguished a small flame on his fur and looked at Mario, the man/clone who had just taken out six of his friends without breaking a sweat. He wished he had the Chaos Emeralds. Oh, how he wished he had the Chaos Emeralds.
Mario must have seen this, for a slight smirk appeared below the moustache. Sonic had no idea where the mushroom came from, but Mario gulped it down in one and was, before Sonic had a chance to squeak in fear, twice his original size. He now towered over Sonic, his footsteps shaking the ground beneath the petrified hedgehog's trainers. Mario looked down at Sonic and smiled.
"The Doctor will see you now."
A large red and blue pill appeared in his hand. Mario had never succeeded in becoming a full-time doctor: as he drew his arm back, Sonic had a feeling he was about to find out why.
"Mario, stop!"
Mario filled Sonic's vision, so he was unable to see Peach. All he could do was listen to her voice.
"Please stop, Mario! All this pain and destruction – it's not you!"
The giant clone swivelled unsteadily, and Sonic thought that he detected a glint of guilt. The shining blue eyes looked down and locked with Peach's again, barely a giant pace away from him. Not afraid like the others, instead they were brimming with sadness.
"My Mario," she said, putting her arms around his leg. "What have they done to you?"
The pill vanished up Mario's sleeve. His mouth opened and closed several times before it spoke. "I'm not your Mario."
"Of course you are!"
"No," he said, turning away and almost trampling Sonic. "I'm not Mario. They told me."
"Who did?"
"Mario doesn't feel all this darkness. Mario is a hero. I am just a creature of SubSpace, made to serve my masters!"
As the effects of the mushroom began to wear off, Sonic watched Mario slowly return to normal size, shaking with barely suppressed emotion as he did so. Peach draped her arms around the plumber's neck and pressed herself into his back.
"They t-t-told me…" moaned the clone, "they said that if I kept my watch here, the p-p-pain would go away… The misery…"
"Hush," Peach said, removing his cap and stroking her slight hand through Mario's tousled brown hair. "Don't listen to them. You are my Mario, and I love you most and best. I can make the pain go away."
Mario faced her again. "Oh Peach… Though the darkness was ever so great, I never…"
"I know, my darling. I know."
She wrapped her arms around him anew and, bending down, pushed her lips up against his. His arms encircled her in turn, and as he clung Sonic noticed the cyan glint from Peach's right hand, hovering behind the clone. Without lifting her lips, Peach pushed the SubSpace Key into his neck. Mario gave a strangled cry, and then he was flowing backwards into the gem as Peach held it still, until the last fragments became purple mist and were swallowed, the cry still hanging. Peach stood up, put the key in her pocket and straightened her hair.
"Damn, that was cold," said Sonic.
Peach shrugged.
Then the two of them were blown off their feet as a large white shape flew overhead. From his position on the ground, Sonic watched as what seemed to be a giant white hand flew down the corridor, turned right and disappeared.
"My God," said Peach.
"What's that?" asked Sonic.
Peach rolled her eyes and pelted after the flying hand. Sonic jogged behind her. From the floor, Yoshi slowly raised himself and put the still unconscious Meta Knight on his back. Then he followed Sonic with tired and unsteady steps, the others walking with varying levels of difficulty behind him. The Captain, with many misgivings, supported/dragged Wario along with his good arm.
"At least he's not so fat now," he gasped.
Reaching the end of the corridor of canisters, still trying to produce clones with a low success rate, Peach and Sonic saw the cyan stairs leading up into purple space and the iridescent platform that was at the top. The hand they had been chasing was floating above that, making quick convulsive movements. As the two made their way up the stairs, its voice quickly became audible: loud and booming, with hints of insanity around the edges and the occasional manic chuckle.
…HAPPENED TO YOU, SIBLING? it asked. ONCE SO FULL OF LOVE FOR THE WORLD, YOU WOULD NOW STOP IT IN ITS TRACKS? WUB WUB?
Sonic stopped trying to keep pace and broke into a sprint. He dashed up the stairs three at a time towards the floating hand and its "sibling", a second hand levitating in kind. This one was calmer, with less tics and tremors, and was a right hand to the other's left.
YOU TRY MY PATIENCE, it hollered, a voice that shook the soul. ALWAYS WITH YOUR STRANGE BELIEFS AND STRANGE NOISES. I CREATED YOU TO BE A SPIRIT OF DESTRUCTION! HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN THAT ALREADY?
IF ALL IS STOPPED, THERE IS NO DESTRUCTION! NO CREATION EITHER! NOTHING BUT A VAST, EMPTY, TIMELESS EXPANSE!
The right hand smirked. Yes, it was a hand, but the smug little grunt and the sweeping movement it made, as if it were a lord pooh-poohing his serf's demands, were definite smirk material. So thought Sonic, as he reached the top of his climb and stared up in wonder at the two hands, apparently discussing the future of the world. Was this where SubSpace, the time-stopping purple mist of SubSpace, fitted in?
I TIRE OF YOUR PRATTLING said the right hand. IT IS A SHAME YOU ESCAPED YOUR PRISON, AND SINCE ENCARCERATION WILL NOT SATISFY YOU I MUST RESORT TO OTHER MEANS OF PUNISHMENT.
Had they freed the left hand by destroying the Mario clone? Was this a good thing?
Evidently the right hand thought not. As Peach reached the top of her climb, and made the same goldfish-like expression Sonic was sporting, it began to flex. Its fingers were surrounded by blue lightning, which crackled and spat and nearly fried Sonic and Peach where they stood.
SIBLING, I CANNOT ALLOW YOU TO DO THIS! cried the left hand. IT SEEMS THAT I, THE SO CALLED "CRAZY HAND", MUST SAVE YOU FROM YOUR OWN INSANITY!
The right hand extended an index finger, sending a beam of blue light that seemingly pinned the Crazy Hand to an invisible wall. The Crazy Hand shook and cried, an unhinged yell of anguish matched in volume only by the booming laughter of its sibling.
AND I AM THE MASTER HAND, CREATIVE SPIRIT! it yelled. NOW WATCH ME CREATE FOR YOU A UNIVERSE OF PAIN, AND MASTER YOU!
The laser ceased, leaving the Crazy Hand limp and crackling. Then it began to wobble, slightly at first, then strongly with a roar of defiance. Curling into a fist, it threw itself at the Master Hand.
Yoshi reached the top in time to see one hand smack into each other's palm, where they struggled for a while, stationary yet between them emitting enough power to destroy the planet and create another in its place. The Crazy Hand seemed to win the struggle, throwing the Master Hand back, but the latter extended two fingers and shot from them an orange missile that exploded against its foe with a flash, a bang and a growl. Unbeaten, the Crazy Hand spread its palm flat and swung, missing the Master Hand; the Master Hand in turn swept its palm downwards, then clenched and punched up. The Crazy Hand dodged both blows by inches.
"What the hell's going on?" said the Captain, dumping Wario on the lip of the platform.
"A battle between creation and destruction," said Yoshi, eyes wide in wonder. "A battle for Nintendo itself!" Nobody understood him, of course.
The Crazy hand had positioned itself above its opponent, and with a wiggle of its fingers summoned explosives that hailed down on the Master Hand. While the latter trembled, the Crazy Hand sliced down, all fingers extended and spinning rapidly, and seemed to drill through the right hand until it lay lifeless on the platform. The Crazy Hand shook slightly, and gave out great pants that ruffled Sonic's fur despite the hand's lack of mouth.
SORRY I AM, BLUB GLUB, said the Crazy Hand, BUT YOU HAD TO BE STOPPED BEFORE YOU DESTROYED THE WHOLE WORLD.
THE WHOLE WORLD? OH NO NO NO. SURELY NOT.
It curled around again, the Master Hand, and flexed its fingers. Red circles drew in towards it – one, two, three red rings.
I WOULD NEVER DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT.
The Crazy Hand was a fist again, hurtling towards its sibling. In response, the Master Hand extended its fingers. One red ring emerged, hurling the Crazy Hand back and towards the gate with the tentacles, the scream of rage stopped dead as it flew. Then another ring emerged, and then a third. Sonic felt the second ring hit him, not painful exactly but immeasurably strong. It lifted him off his feet almost gently. There was pain, but it was dulling already. He felt almost relaxed as he, and Peach, and the rest of the LOL were hurled towards the door, barely able to hear the Master Hand's booming farewell words.
I WILL CONQUER THE ENTIRE GALAXY!
o o o
"The time is at hand!" said Ganondorf, his yellowish smile gleaming from the monitor. "Bowser, the lever!"
Bowser looked over his shoulder at the troll behind him, still holding Bowser Junior captive on the end of his pole. He even felt a smidgen of pity for the troll. Poor sod, obeying his master unquestioningly, not knowing that he was helping to bring about the end. The end for him, the end for all the rest of the world.
But Bowser clung to the faint hope that some day he could bring back his children, and Kammy, and the Princess. The process might be reversible. Who knew? It was unlike anything that had been tried before. Death had been tried many times before, and was well known to be irreversible. Bowser gave a final forlorn glance at his son, bound and gagged and held upside down, and pushed the lever.
The two towers, primed and ready to go, sent their signal of oblivion out across Nintendo. It only took two minutes for the whole of the planet to go under. Bowser watched with grim fascination as the space between him and the troll, stupidity stamped across its stunned features, filled with purple, until there was no space any more.
Only SubSpace.
From miles away, down fibre optic cables, Ganondorf laughed.