Electricity arced between electrodes built into the soul of Subcon and a wall somewhere deep within Petalburg split open with a disgusting burst and a statue of a Mamu cracked at it sosul. Over the entirety of Subcon, beating out against the closed gates of the nexus of the timeline, was a high-pitched sound that built in level until it was undeniably loud. Yet as strong as it was, it could not reach outside of the nexus, it would remain in Subcon.

Pennington stood at the street corner staring blankly at his watch, it seemed to have suddenly broken down. Annoyed, he tapped it several times. For a brief moment, he could swear he felt the pavement below him rumble as if Petalburg had just been hit by a small earthquake. No, it was either much too quick or much too irrelevant.

Pennington looked up in resignation and crossed the street to get to his practically dilapidated three-story apartment building. He climbed the stairs to the top floor and stopped just before Penny, his 'scientist' neighbour, smoking in a hallway. Pennington heard that she had tried to become a pop singer in her youth but it never panned out due to the war with Dark Land.

"Long night at the office?" she asked.

"Evening Penny," said Pennington as he walked past her. He took the keys from his coat pocket and stepped up to his door but then stopped as an idea came to him. He turned back and looked at his neighbour. "Say, know what time it is?"

"Sure," she nodded and looked down at her watch. "Strange, my watch is broken." She looked at him and smiled innocently. "I guess that will teach me to buy cheap stuff."

"Goodnight," smiled Pennington and he entered his room more puzzled than he was when he had left it. He shut the door carefully with a soft click, put down his bulging briefcase, took off his coat and his hat. He spotted the kettle on his stove, it was off, yet it was still steaming? He'd been out for hours, hadn't he? He shrugged and picked up his piano accordion, lifted the instrument and placed it down on his knee and started to play. His fingers danced skillfully across the instrument, which had been a special order from Dinohattan. The music Pennington made, his own composition, was haunting, sad but he always made it beautiful.

In the dark recesses of Subcon, far below the city of Petalburg, a solitary Birdface stood alone at a polished black obsidian table. When the phone closest to the Birdface rung, the monstrosity picked up the device quite calmly, listened attentively and wrote down a message. The Birdface then passed the message into a railway line.

The railway line carried the message through the chambers of Birdfaces to a control room, where it was read by the statuesque Birdface present. The being read the message and then pulled down a long and heavy lever. The Birdface then stuck two cutouts of two people across a board away from a grouping of many similar cutouts of different citizens of Petalburg. He hit a button and the doors around the control room opened up, transforming it into a giant chamber of a war room.

Birdfaces poured into the chamber and were silent aside from the echoic ticking of watches all around them. Mr. Pipe stepped out to the front of the congregation and took a glance at the war table they had all surrounded. "What is to be done?" asked a Birdface. "This situation is dangerous, yes…"

A rumbling noise distracted the thoughts of all of the Birdfaces and they looked up the portal above their heads. It was one of Wart's attempts at opening up a new gate to out of the nexus, one not keyed to the Golden Coins. From the portal, they could see several legions of aliens following that being the Birdfaces knew to be the thief and his alien comrade. As the spectacle occurred, one of the Birdfaces began to tremble violently until he collapsed to the floor and his mouth opened up large to the portal. The Birdface next to the fallen one opened up a small silver box and pulled out a Tryclyde, dropping it in the mouth of the Birdface. After a brief second, the Birdface that had fallen was all right and the portal faded. Wart's attempt at creating the gat ehad failed.

"What about the night of the Mamu?" asked a Birdface. "It is my responsibility to schedule this, we must resolve this issue, yes."

"This has gone too far!" retorted another Birdface. "Tell Wart! He'll know what to do!"

"No! Tell him nothing! Not until we understand more!" whimpered a Birdface in the back.

"What is going on here?" croaked the amphibian voice of the Mamu known as Wart. The hunched figure eof Wart knelt against a large golden staff, an elongated kind of wand and stared at his subjects in hate. The Birdfaces looked upon their master and were silenced once more. He was the lone survivor of the Mamus due to him being a mutant and he was always angry when his attempts to leave Subcon failed. "Who will go first?" None of the Birdfaces spoke up. "Let's get on with it, yes."

"There is a problem," said Mr. Pipe. "A man has evaded us. We have not been able to find him." Wart said nothing for a moment, he jus tlooked at Mr. Pipe with his hateful piercing eyes.

"Go on," he ordered.

A photo flash illuminated the dead body of the hotel manager, who was still slumped in his own blood. Pennington looked at the manager's body and examined the man's stab wounds carefully. Pennington made quick scribbles into his notebook and looked over at the hotel's front desk, toward the dog-eared message ledger with coffee stains on it.

Pennington flicked through the last few pages of the ledger, holding it up to the light every time he thought he saw something. He pushed down on the paper, noting the imprint of the message to Dane Toad. He tracked the imprint of messages… this man had been contacted every day for three weeks. There were worried messages from some woman named Chanterelle, they seemed to get worse every single day.

"Got another one upstairs," said Flavio, tapping Pennington on the shoulder. Nodding, Pennington followed the officer to a room where a lone cop was dusting.

"Take shot sup here?" asked Pennington.

"Not yet," answered Flavio.

"Where is everyone?"

"Guess we're it tonight," shrugged Flavio as Dr. Topper entered the room with the coroner. Topper stepped over the body of the dead woman, bending to his knees as Pennington observed from behind him.

"It's our friend?" asked Pennington.

"These cuts were made with a long, razor like blade," nodded Topper. "It matches." As the photographer arrived to take shots, Topper pulled Pennington aside.

"Is something troubling you?"

"The wounds are so… precise."

"Is that unusual?"

"In my past experience when they use a knife they tend to be more random," explained Topper. "Thesea relike a surgeon's incisions – specific, unemotional." Topper looked at the body for a moment.

"Was she… you know?"

"No, in each case there has been no indication that there was that kind of an attack on the victim," answered Topper.

"What does all that tell us?"

"You got me, Pennington."

Deep in the Petalburg subway station, Toad ran like a madman, he could hear constant noises of the underground, those of trainsa rrivinga nd departing. He slipped and fell, landing squarely in a puddle of soggy trash on the ground. He sat up, not hurt and not even covered in mud. It was kind of funny. Not funny enough to make him laugh, but he still did. It was sad, and so he cried and his tears echoed through the corners of the subway station.

There was a small feminine hand that touched the back of his hand and he looked up, startled at her. He stared at her hand and noticed the tattoo on it that spelled out 'Éclair'. Her name, he assumed. Éclair looked down at him as he looked unsteady into her eyes.

Pennington planted his hands carefully on the frosted glass before Kicksworth's office and then knocked only twice. "Enter!" came the allowing voice of Kicksworth and so Pennington did, finding his boss distracted, searching about the office for something. "What is it?" Kicksworth grabbed the waste basket and emptied the contents of it onto his desk a she began to search for something.

"A formality," said Pennington. "I need to speak with Gus."

"What for?" asked Kicksworth as he moved onto his desk drawers.

"His reports are of no help," said Pennington. "Gus has fabricated a bizarre paranoid delusion. I thought if I could interview him personally I might…"

"Leave him alone, Pennington."

"It's extremely important to my investigation…"

"I'll be the judge of that," said Kicksworth and he moved under his desk. "You've seen for yourself, he's unstable – by all rights I should've released him from his service –it's only for the sake of his family that I've kept him on wages. Now, anything else?"

"Actually, I was wondering if you could give me a few uniforms, to follow up for me…," stammered Pennington as his voice trailed off.

"Impossible," said Kicksworth. "Got trouble up to my ears right now – can't spare anyone. Get your assistant to do that for you, she seems a capable girl…" Stromboli stood up and looked at Pennington with resignation.

"Lost something, sir?"

"What make syou think that?" scoffed Kicksworth. "If you would just learn to concentrate on facts, not get so side-tracked – you might get things done faster and…" Pennington didn't wait to hear the rest of Kicksworth's lecture, he just left and clicked the door close. He rushed to the precinct shooting gallery, quickly putting on his earmuffs and grabbing a devolution gun.

Chunks of plywood blasted away with prejudice as Pennington practiced his marksmanship. This was one of the few instances where the scattering and disorganizing of everything around him did not bother him. This was where he went to vent. It was cathartic and after Kicksworth stifling his investigation, he needed to vent, he needed it badly.

A gentle hand touched Pennington's shoulder and he whipped around to see Lahla smiling stiffly at him. "You must not sneak up on me like that!" reprimanded Pennington and he walked over to a small wooden table, placing his devolution gun down.

"I'm sorry," apologized Lahla.

"Come on," sighed Pennington when he looked at his broken watch. He unstrapped it from his hand and gave it over to Lahla. "Here. Fix this for me."

"Yes, sir," said Lahla and Pennington paced out from the room, removing his earmuffs as his assistant followed him around. It was a short walk to his office, with Lahla entering only a few seconds after Pennington. He grabbed a sheet off of his desk and sighed when he looked at it.

"You typed this report?" he asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Look at it," he said and he turned it over to her. Lahla bent down, adjusted her glasses and looked at it carefully.

"It seems fine."

"Look here!" exclaimed Pennington and he pointed to a tiny ink smudge at the bottom of the sheet. "How do you expect me to submit this?"

"I'm… sorry," said Lahla, looking at him like he was crazy.

"Be more careful, please…"

"Certainly."

"Now, what do you want?"

"I have something to report," she notified and handed him some paperwork. "Toad and Chanterelle. There was only one couple I could find that live in the city. Here's where they live." Pennington took the paperwork, looked at it carefully and then back up at Lahla.

"Maybe you'll work out after all, Lahla," he complimented. She beamed with pride at the comment, but she hid it well.

"Thank you, sir," she said before she turned and left. A half smile crawled onto Pennington's face as he watched her leave.

Toad followed Éclair up a flight of dark stairs. He didn't know why, it just felt right, as if he had to be there, near her. She kept looking back at him, smiling, but never saying anything. She clearly wasn't mute, she was smart. She'd followed him from the church. Maybe she knew who he was. She took him into a shabby appointment and pointed for him to sit on a couch. He gave her an uncomfortable look, but she just smiled again, turned on the radio and entered a bedroom.

There was a bathroom aside from the bedroom, Toad could hear the sound of running water from within. Toad tuned the radio, filtering through a battle of voices before he made it to a fragmented news report. "Earlier this evening it was reported hat two bodies were found by police in Tinga's Inn," said the news reader. Two? There was only the one, the woman in the room, wasn't there? "At this stage it is not clear if the killer responsible is the man the police have been hunting for the past three weeks. And now, for a message from the WarioWare department store…"

Toad looked across the room and noticed the bedroom door ajar. Within, he noticed Éclair naked facing a red wall. On her back was an elaborate tattoo of the crocodile with the wrench in one hand, a Gold Flower in the other and a violet hue to his eyes. All these depictions of Waluigi seemed truly familiar to Toad. He stepped back before she noticed him and dropped down onto the couch and he noticed his shadow cast on the wall by a nearby lamp. He put his hand by the bulb and started to make shadows on the wall with his fingers. He made animal shadows, first a dog and then a bird and then… another bird appeared, but not his.

Toad glanced around and noticed Éclair sitting next to him. She pointed to herself and just said, in a whisper, "Éclair." He nodded slowly and looked back at her. She wanted his name, but it didn't feel right to give it, so he put his hands back in the light.

"That's me. I'm a shadow," he said. She smiled, but she didn't understand. How could she?

Pennington's shoes were shiny as always, standing out evena s they walked along a tattered rug, approaching the door to Gus' apartment. He opened it to find Gus' wife feeding one of their children in the kitchen. "Excuse me?" he asked and she turned to see Pennington standing in the doorway behind her. He stepped forward and smiled at the child. "How old is the little girl?"

"Seventeen months," answered Gus' wife.

"She's so pretty," complimented Pennington. "The door was open. I'm Pennington, I work with Gus. How is he?"

"Oh, the same…," she said, her voice faltering. "He won't even come out to go to the bathroom now…" As tears started to fall out of her eyes, Pennington touched her shoulder and immediately felt a little embarrassed by the display of affection. She glanced toward a close dbedroom door. "He won't even come out to go to the bathroom now…"

"Let me see what I can do," said Pennington and he entered the bedroom to find Gus, unshaven and haunted by something. He was clutching a devolution gun and mumbled to himself with his eyes tightly shut. Yet he noticed when Pennington entered the room.

"Pennington? What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Let's talk," said Pennington and Gus just wiped the sweat on his forehead. "I'm on the serial killer case."

"Oh?" mouthed Gus and Pennington took stock of the room. It was dark, but he finally allowed himself to be hit by the wav eof putrid smells. Everything was a mess. The food was rotten, the furniture overturned and the clothes… dirty. Gus' face was heavily bruised and covered in sweat.

"You don't look so hot," said Pennington.

"Yeah?" mocked Gus. "Well I'm having a really abd day. Come to think of it, I've been having several of them in a row…" Gus laughed, as if he'd said something funny. He seemed to be completely out of control. They both sat down, facing each other in the gloom as a rat scuttled past Gus. With lightning reflexes, Gus threw a shoe at it and sen tit running under the bed. Gus smiled at Pennington, he was clearly more than a little bit insane. "I don't know anything, Pennington. As long as you understand, that's all."

"Can I do anything to help?"

"No."

"Your wife, she's worried about you."

"She's the reason I'm in here."

"What do you mean?"

"You don't want to listen to what I have to say… it'll give you nightmares."

"I'll listen to anything you want to tell me."

"My family are imposters, Pennington," said Gus as he scuttled nearer to Pennington, looking the detective in the eyes. "What would you do if you found ut something like that? You'd probably lock yourself away too, right?"

"You're going to have to explain this one to me, I'm afraid…," stammered Pennington.

"Nothing to explain," explained Gus. "It's a… feeling. I just suddenly realized my life is a lie. Oh man, Pennington, you think I'd be in here if I could explain this stuff? Ah, man!" Gus grabbed his temple with his hands. "Man, my head hurts so much! Man, Pennington, I'm rotting away inside and there's nothing I can do about it!" Blood started to run from Gus' nostrils, so he didn't hesitate when Pennington handed him a napkin.

"You need a doctor," said Pennington.

"No," said Gus, shaking his head. "You should go now. There's nothing more I can tell you that will make any sense. Please, just get out of here."