As dawn broke, exhausted mobsters dutifully patrolled the streets of Buoy Base, stopping every passerby they could get their hands on. On the outskirts of the city, vagrant fires burned in a distant orange and a large drainage pipe dripped into a brackish creek. Within the drainage pipe was an underground runoff room, a cavernous space beneath a high street grating, damp and cold. Waluigi sat on the ground there, methodically cleansing and loading his gun. When he was finished, he placed the gun on top of his folded, torn maps and closed his eyes. Waluigi touched his temple, his head aching a she remembered the first time he saw Shokora's face. His rolex sat open in front of him and he picked it up like it was a deadly talisman that only he could wield.

The sun broke through the grate above and Waluigi closed his rolex, holding it tight. Then, he stood, picked up his Poltergust and left.

Bean looked down on Luigi and slapped him hard. "Hey!" she shouted. When Luigi didn't awake, she slapped him hard. Luigi lay on the cota s she left and blinked. He realized he was in the barn. It was morning now and the sun was rising through. He got up and grabbed his Poltergust, quickly remembering that he had been handcuffed.

In the farm house, Peasley drew on a sheet of paper at the kitchen table as Bean entered. "The man's up," he told her. She stiffened and looked out of the window. "Is he staying here?"

"No," she told him and she left the farm house, quickly approaching the barn with her devolution gun in hand. Luigi sat on the ground just outside the barn door, the metal cot right behind him, attached by his handcuff. He had been slowly cleaning and loading his Poltergust. "Toss it!" Bean told him and he froze.

"I just finished cleaning," he said, half-annoyed, but he obeyed, tossing it in the dirt and she lowered her devolution gun.

"How do you feel?"

"I'm at thirty percent."

"Take it slow and by the end of the day, you'll be at fifty," she told him. "Good." She tossed him a key and he uncuffed himself. "I took you in so you wouldn't die and now you won't die. So take the morning to rest, then you need to get off my farm."

"I can't do that," said Luigi.

"I'm sorry?"

"I need to stay here for a little while longer."

"I am not cool with that."

"Well, I'm sorry."

"Well, I'm sorry too. You just lost your take the morning to rest privileges, get off my farm."

"No," he told her and she raised her devolution gun.

"No. You couldn't scare an autistic hobo with that thing. Literally."

"This is a devolution gun. One blast could turn you into something form the past."

"And that's telling," sighed Luigi. "You're holding a gun. I say I'm not afraid, so you describe the gun to me but it's not the gun I'm afraid of." He paused for a heartbeat. "What are you going to shoot in the air? Blow a big hole through the roof of your barn? To scare me? Go ahead, but you couldn't let me die, you're not going to kill me. It wouldn't work anyways."

"So now I saved your life, which makes me weak?"

"Look, I'm not any threat to you or your boy," said Luigi. "I just need to be on your property, but I'd prefer not to have any contact with you at all. I'll sleep in the ditch off the waterway. I'd prefer that, in fact. There's just one thing you have to do for me and you won't have to deal with me again." He took the scrap of map from his pocket, unfolded it and showed it to her. "Just, verify for me that's your house on the map. So I know I'm in the right place."

"What is this?"

"A map."

"That's my house. Why is it marked?"

"Doesn't matter," said Luigi. "Ok. I'll be out of the barn in an hour, if you can spare it, I'll take the water jug with me. Does that well have water? I'll fill it from there." Bean turned the map over and he rjaw dropped when she saw the number on the back.

"What is this?" she asked again.

"Does that mean something to you?" asked Luigi, looking her in the eye. For a moment, Bean stared daggers at Luigi, but then she lifted the devolution gun and shot him square in the chest. His shirt was ripped open bloody and he fell back screaming as he felt himself turning into Rool.

Waluigi's fingers parted the green of dense foliage and he looked through at a practically suburban street. Hiding in the trees across a home, Waluigi watched as a young boy in a bright jacket ran out of the front door and off down the street. Waluigi checked the folded map in his trembling greedy hands and the house was indeed circled in black. Stuffing the map in his pocket, Waluigi pushed out through the trees.

Waluigi then stopped in his tracks as children ran all around him. His hand went to his temple and a painful memory of being shot by Bean flooded his thoughts.

Bean dragged Luigi by the leg and then heaved the barn door shut. She looked at his chest and was startled, instead of turning him into ooze, his body was reconfiguring and growing stronger. His chest seemed be more well defined, more muscular and bigger as well. Was there also a green tint to it? He wasn't devolving. He was evolving.

"Who are you?" she asked as she shoved the devolution gun to his face with a rush of fury. "You're right, I'm not a killer, but I am fine with how a blast to your undying face will hurt you. Who are you and what are you here for?"

Luigi breathed hard, bleeding in the dirt with a devolution gun to his nose. He forced himself to calm so that he could gather his thoughts and mentally reverse what the gun did to him. "Time travel hasn't been invented yet," he said, "but in thirty years, a man named Professor Frankly will invent it."

Waluigi entered a suburban park, there weren't too many of these in Buoy Base. The few that were had been converted from old military equipment that had been left behind. At the far end of the park was a birthday party. The young boy in the bright jacket sat alone under a tree and Waluigi approached him. "Hey," said Waluigi. "Aren't you going to come over? There's cake."

"It is ice cream and I can't eat ice cream, because of the dairy," said the boy.

"Well you should join the party even if you don't want cake. Don't you have a birthday coming up?" asked Waluigi.

"In a few months," said the boy, his voice sad. "We were going to go to the lake but I don't think we are now."

"I'm sorry," said Waluigi and he left the park, finding it hard to breathe all of a sudden.

Bean sat beside Luigi as he finished his long winded explanation, weak from talking so long. His story had gone on so long, but he had still had to omit the references that would have made him seem like a complete nut. He was just a mobster to her. Not a Godly kaptain, not one of the 'Super Mario Brothers' and definitely not from another planet. Just a mobster. He also made sure to omit that he was Waluigi, or would become him. He had no doubt this woman could not kill him, but she could turn him into Rool. Waluigi was just a regular old Nanbi in his story.

"I can't go back to the city and find him because Popple and Cackletta, the bosses, all their people are going to search the streets until they turn up me or him," spat Luigi. "All I have is his map and that he's coming here."

"A Nanbi," whispered Bean.

"Yeah," whispered Luigi. "Did you know what the Bob-Omb Mafia really did?"

"I'd heard stories," nodded Bean. "So he's coming here to murder me and my son because he thinks my son might be this Fawful. Once he kills this Fawful, what happens?"

"I think…," paused Luigi. "He thinks, the instant Fawful dies, he'll never have been sent back so he'll just vanish and be back in the future with his wife."

"Who is he?' pressed Bean. "The guy you let run? Just some random ghost from the future?"

"Yeah," lied Luigi. "Just some ghost. You know what these numbers mean?"

The boy's house was well tended by someone who loves growing things observed Waluigi, probably his mother. There were laurels, ivy on trellises, flowers and trees. The boy came through the side gate. He lifted the back door matt and picked up a dusty key.

Waluigi sat in the corner of the yard, his face set hard. The boy stood, key in hand and he dropped the matt. Then he turned and saw Waluigi, standing now. There was an eerie stillness between them. The past was pleading Waluigi to stop.

Waluigi's face was struggling to be stone, and then it was. He drew his Poltergust in one fluid motion and fired.

Waluigi walked back across the park with his map in his hand. Children played in the distance. There were children's voices all around. Waluigi spun, his breath up into his head. The map fell to the ground. The park around him was green and full of children. He knelt over onto his knees and cries. He grabbed the grass, holds it in his fingers, it was thick and green. He remembered when Shokora told him that she wanted children.

Bean took a pen from a workbench and showed Luigi the numbers: 07153902935. She drew lines and brackets in with the pen, turning it to 07/15/39[02935]. "This is my son Peasley's birthday and the hospital he was born in," said Bean. "Would he kill my son?"

"Think about what doing it could fix," sighed Luigi. "What he thinks it would fix." It was clearly not an answer that Bean appreciated very much. After all, Luigi had just told her that her son would grow up to be the Gotti of the future. "He'll kill the other kids on that map first, come here last to put off facing me."

"If he comes here, can you stop him?" asked Bean. "Given this, if I erred on the side of caution and believed all of this, I'm asking. If I trusted you. Will you stop him before he gets to my son?"

"I've barely got a mental thread left on my life," sighed Luigi. "I kill this man, I get it back. You can trust me."