Pennington entered the hospital room of his mother, holding tightly on to his piano accordion. He clutched onto the bleeding gash in his side and stumbled over to his mother in her life support machine. He reached out and gently caressed the glass over his mother's face. He wished that he could touch her skin.
"I'm so sorry," he whispered and reached down, grabbing the wires leading to the machine. He pulled at them until they snapped loose from their connections. The machines slowly died, their lights went out and eventually, the breathing apparatus of the machine ceased to pump.
Pennington's mother struggled momentarily, her eyes widened and she reached out to him through the glass. Then, she was finally still. Pennington turned away from the woman, hiding his face in the shadows. But he knew that he was crying, wasn't that enough? He pulled up a metal chair and sat, grimacing with pain. He lifted the accordion with some difficulty and balanced it on his knee.
Pennington slumped over his accordion, as a pool of blood grew on the floor beneath him. In spite of it all, he was still breathing. As the room trembled, Pennington looked toward the window, there was something going on out there, but then behind him the door opened. He quickly stopped as a figure walked in and stopped. Pennington was barely conscious, but he was aware of the man behind him. He didn't need to turn around.
"Hello, Pennington," greeted Kicksworth. "Why do you always find things out the hard way? You should have listened to me, just done your job and now everything would be okay. But you had to play detective."
"You're one of them…," hissed Pennington.
"These people don't play games," laughed Kicksworth. "They can do anything they want; don't you understand? Maybe I am one of them, but then, in a way, we all are, Pennington…" He held out a devolution handgun and brought it up, touching it gently against Pennington's temple. "Think of this as an early retirement. Didn't bring that gold watch I'm afraid."
Pennington shut his eyes and grit his teeth in preparation for the end as Kicksworth's finger tightened on the trigger.
The unconscious body of Toad was carried down by the Birdfaces through a narrow alley to a solitary metal door in a wall. Mr. Pipe stepped up to the door, leaned down to a mat at the foot of the door, lifted it and took a key from underneath. He unlocked the door, opened it and put the key back before going inside. He waved the other Birdfaces forward. Through the door was an elevator, with only a down button. Mr. Pipe pushed it with no impatience and several seconds later, the door opened. All of them stepped inside, the doors closed and the lift descended. When the doors opened again, they did so to a dark passageway.
When Toad started to come to, he noted the dark corridor he was being carried through to the small platform before him, which itself was between arches. A number of open carts, with numbers on their sides, rolled past as if he was being placed through some bizarre amusement park ride. The Birdfaces carried Toad aboard and Mr. Pipe sat down beside him. The cart lurched forward into a dark tunnel, deeper into the Birdface's secret world. It moved through a subterranean landscape of strange machines all built like green or red pipes. Toad opened his eyes and looked around groggily, his vision eventually settling on Mr. Pipe.
"Where… are you taking me?" he groaned.
"You will see," was Mr. Pipe's nondescript answer.
The cart moved past a section of the tunnel that looked like a small area like a factory floor. The Birdfaces moved about watching a long conveyor belt carrying naked bodies. Toad tried to see more, but the cart quickly moved into another tunnel and the weird scene was gone. The cart finally came to a stop in a cave.
"Here we are," said a Birdface and they all got out, with Mr. Pipe pointing toward a door at the end of a long corridor to the side.
"You must go in there," said Mr. Pipe and two Birdfaces grabbed Toad to push him forward. Toad almost fell but managed to step himself shakily toward the door. Toad stepped in and the door shut automatically behind him. There was a blast of electrical feedback and Toad looked up at a speaker mounted toward the wall.
"Move, forward," ordered a mechanical voice through the speaker. Toad followed a painted line on the floor, standing before a strange machine. A slot opened in the wall behind him, mechanical arms sprung forward and restrained him. A claw lowered from the ceiling, gripping his head, thrusting it abruptly into a goggle like mechanism on the machine. Toad struggled at first, but the claws held him firmly in place. A sudden burst of light from the machine blinded him. There were two more bursts after that. "Move, forward." Across the room, a buzzer sounded and a red light flashed above a door. Toad stepped over, barely able to see. He opened the door and stepped into darkness.
Lights came on, extremely bright. He was in another room, with a chair facing a large wheel painting in a black and white spiral. "Move, forward." He sat down on the chair and the wheel turned, faster and faster. "Watch, the, wheel." The wheel stopped spinning after several seconds. "Move, forward." The next room Toad entered was full of scientific equipment. "Stand, behind, the, screen." Toad saw an X-ray machine and stepped across to it. The screen lit up, filling the room with a green glow before showing him the shape of his own skeleton. Across the room, double doors opened to reveal a dark chamber. "Move, forward."
Toad looked into the chamber and could see the grisly sight. It was chock full of Birdfaces. Behind a podium was a grotesque amphibian looking giant, it was Wart. "Toad! No need to be shy!" he croaked. Toad hesitantly started to walk forward, but as he reached the doors, a silhouetted figure in a bizarre metal contraption wheeled into his way. A practically skeletal hand reached out to Toad and grabbed his arm with an inhuman moan.
As if he'd been touched by a leper, Toad pulled back but the mechanized figure trundled forward and pinned him to a wall. The light revealed it to be none other than Dr. Elvin Gadd, encased in a metal framework covered in silver blades connected to wheels. They turned when he moved forward, metal cutting into his flesh, threatening to skin him alive. Between bouts of immense pain, the creator of the Poltergust hissed at Toad so that none would hear. "You can… still… beat them… remember what I taught you…"
There was something glistening in Gadd's hand, something clutched within his wrist as the blades dipped into his shoulder. Toad dropped down to his knees, so that he could be eye level with Gadd. "Remember what?" asked Toad.
"I'm… sorry… Toad," huffed Gadd, "it… will only last… a moment."
Then, Gadd reached out in spite of the blades sinking into his shoulders and arms and jabbed Toad in the forehead with a syringe. Toad breathed in deeply as a million memories from his life raced in front of his eyes like pictures that moved a microsecond before the next one showed up. He remembered it all. His parents' house in Keelhaul Key, playing with Chanterelle in school, the fire that killed his parents, being taken in by Toadsworth and going to Dinohattan.
The syringe fell out of his forehead and Toad gasped for air. "Remember… Toad," said Gadd, but not the broken old man in the wheelchair in front of him. No. It was in his memories and so, Toad remembered.
"You'll rise to greater heights than that my boy!" said the ice cream vendor, who sold on the pier by Keelhaul Key. Yet, it wasn't the vendor, no, it was Gadd. "Some day when you're older, you'll understand." Toad's father took him back from the pier and to his mother, a beautiful blonde woman. Toad ran back down the pier ahead of his father. His house flashed before him. It wasn't a small affair by any means, in height maybe, but it was a fairly wide place with a long white fence leading to the pier from the backyard. On both sides of the fence it was like the grass was endless.
"That's not…," muttered Toad as he remembered doing his homework outside, while the waves splashed on the beach and the roof of the sundeck sheltered him from the sun. He looked up and noted the mailman, placing a few letters in the bin.
"That's it, Toad," smiled the waving mailman. "Now remember what I told you." Toad squinted at the mailman, but instead of the bearded fellow he expected, it was Gadd once more. "Never talk to Birdfaces."
"Toad… remember him," groaned Gadd at the cost of the blades cutting him and so, Toad did. Now he was in detention, kept after school because he and Chanterelle goofed off in class too much. The teacher was not the old man with spry hair that was supposed to be there, who was in his other memories, no, it was Gadd once more.
"You're wondering why I keep appearing in your memories," said the teacher as he walked forth to the young Toad. "Because I have inserted myself in them." Toad was hit with splashes of holding Chanterelle over the water when they went to Dinohattan, Toadsworth showing him how to fish, taking a picture with the crew of the Starshroom Enterprise, playing on the Keelhaul Key beach with his parents. "All of these memories have been fabricated to teach you about the Birdfaces. To give you a lifetime of knowledge in a single syringe.
He remembered vividly now, the fire in Keelhaul Key that took his parents life from him. He remembered Toadsworth carrying him out, but it wasn't his uncle's voice or face that spoke to him. "You will survive, Toad," said Gadd with Toadsworth's body. "You will find strength within yourself." Gadd set Toad down away from the fire. "And you will prevail."
He remembered exploring Toadsworth's mansion as a child, but he wasn't walking up the stairs. No, he was gliding up them and Toadsworth's butler, an old man who washed the fish tank by the staircase marveled at the sight with Gadd's face. "Getting the hang of it, Toad," congratulated Gadd. "Maybe one day I'll be working for you."
He was back into the classroom, his teacher pulled down a drawing of a strange enormous contraption. "This is the machine the Birdfaces use," said the teacher, "to amplify their thoughts. To try and create a portal to leave the nexus. The machine that changes Subcon. You must take control of it. You must make the machine yours. I know you can beat them, Toad. You must concentrate." Toad awoke with a shock and suddenly, none of those memories felt foreign. None of those memories – even with the alterations within – felt like they had ever been apart from him. The past nine years didn't matter, everything before that? Rescuing Mario and Luigi, taking down Bowser, fighting Rool, going to Ghost Island and working with Donkey Kong? It was all back. All of it.
A trickle of blood ran down Gadd's face as two Birdheads stepped forward pulled Gadd into the darkness. As the wheels turned, the blades spun furiously, peeling back flesh. The cries of Gadd at that moment were among the most horrific that Toad had ever heard. "Come here," instructed Wart. "Don't mind him, he's being taught a lesson." Toad moved past Gadd and into the chamber, looking around, noting the Birdheads' faces watching him silently as he moved to the front to Wart. "Welcome to our little home, Toad."
"What is this place?" asked Toad.
"We like to think of it as a control room," explained Wart. "This is where keep things working, keep the clocks of the timeline ticking." Toad stopped moving at the base of Wart's podium. "You have been a lot of trouble. But you can help us make sure this never happens again, yes." Wart pointed over Toad's head and he turned to see the input drive of the Dream Machine. It was basically a bench with various gadgets attached to it, knives, saws and lights. Toad realized with despair that the input drive was an automated operating table that took the desires hidden in the minds of people for the Dream Machine. "We want to understand how you work. What makes you tick, that's all. Maybe we will learn how to reshape Subcon how we wish to, no more tapping into those filthy Muus, no more using the Dream Machine."
Mr. Pipe nodded to several Birdfaces standing beside him. They stepped forward and grabbed Toad, easily resisting his attempts to fight them. They dragged Toad to the table and strapped him down. Mr. Pipe stepped forward with a syringe and brought it to Toad's forehead, but suddenly, his hand froze and then recoiled. The syringe flew across the room and smashed on the floor. The Bridfaces all looked at Toad and murmured their confusion.
"Don't you dare use your tricks on me!" roared Wart. Toad, genuinely surprised, looked around. Several Birdfaces backed away from him, scared. One called him a freak, another called him a monster and a third stood up, remarking that Toad could dream.
"Shut up, fools!" decried an annoyed Wart. "Children's games." The wheels on the input drive started to turn, spinning knives and scalpels descended towards Toad. Beads of sweat ran down his face and he looked at the knives. Metal clanged, cogs broke, and springs ripped apart and one by one, the knives stopped. Several Birdfaces expressed their terror while Toad was amazed at his own performance. He looked over to Wart and the papers on the podium in front of the amphibian burst into flames. Wart recoiled, taken by surprise. Next, Toad's bonds stretched and broke free. He got out of the machine and stood. Wart's fury scared the Birdfaces even more, with noxious bubbles rising from his mouth. "Shut it down!"
A Birdface at the back of the room picked up the phone. Everyone in the room waited in silence. "Yes, we have a problem here," he said. "Shut it down immediately." Toad looked around in confusion as the machines started to wind down. The rusted metal clock hanging on the wall suddenly grinded to a dead stop.
"This has all gone much too far!" groaned Wart and he stood and began to shake. He shut his eyes, clenched his teeth and gripped his cane, planting his feet firmly to the floor. In front of Wart, the air rippled and distorted, a shock wave moved out from the center and hurtled across the room, throwing Toad off of his feet and smashing him against a wall. Wart was still shaking, but his green body was rippling and he was getting taller, his already monstrous height increasing to epic proportions.
Toad picked himself up off the floor, dazed, hurt and terrified. He wasn't the hero. He wasn't the guy who stopped the giant green dinosaur at the end of the story. That was Mario. He was just always there, helping however he could. These powers… they weren't something he ever should have had… but he did have them. Around the room, walls cracked and plaster rained down from the ceiling. Another shockwave flew at Toad. He lunged out of the way as it smashed like an invisible fist.
When they rescued Mario from Ghost Island and he was given extraordinary abilities, Toad didn't envy him. He still didn't. This wasn't just a case of survival anymore. The nexus was damaged and without the Muus, there was no way to ever fix it. He didn't know where Mario was. Only he was in Subcon. Trapped there as long as the gates into the nexus were closed. He could die here waiting for them to open, or he could do as he'd seen Mario do and save the day. He could use the gift given to him.
Toad tensed his body and Wart began to shake violently from behind the podium. The podium ripped form its moorings, slid across the floor and pinned Wart to the wall. The amphibious monster yelled in pain, shaking violently. Then, the podium exploded, splintering into a thousand pieces and wart stepped forward through the dust as if he'd suffered no pain at all. Several Birdheads huddled behind an upturned table, watching Toad and Wart closely.
The two faced each other, both standing, mental energies focused against each other. He fighting, truly just a test of will, was taking its toll on both men. A dagger rose into the air, hanging suspended, slowly rotating to face Toad with its shining silver blade. Wart clenched his rotting teeth, tightening the meaty fists by his side. Wart pushed every ounce of mental power at the knife. Toad began to bleed profusely from an open gash in his cheek as he pushed every ounce of mental power at the knife.
Eventually, the blade started to move, ever so slightly at first, towards Toad. His body was shaking with his mental effort. A bead of sweat ran down his brow, dripping into his eye and blurring his vision. He was losing, but only for a second. Toad focused on Wart's bulging eyes. Slowly, Toad brought his hand and reached out, as if he were holding something. He started to close his hand into a fist, squeezing with all of his might. For all of Wart's size, physical strength and power over the Birdfaces, he was always alone. He was afraid of being the last of his species. His conquest of Subcon came from his anger at the Muus not for destroying his species but for sparing him for being slightly different. Now he wouldn't be alone and so, Wart didn't fight back when Toad made his brain collapse in on itself, being crushed by an invisible force. Then, Wart's medallion fell from the air and clattered onto the floor. Wart's eyes clouded over and he too fell down, lying still as the impact of his fall made an impression into the very ground it hit. A silence fell over the room, and above Toad, small pink insectoid fairies began to emerge from the medallion as the clock started ticking one more. Their heads were adorned with a cap that resembled a spike. These were the Muus and they were free.
They paid no attention to the Birdfaces as they looked at the body of Wart in fear. They hardly paid any attention to Toad, but he found a polka cap in his hand, just like the one that he had once upon a time in… in Dinohattan, when he, Mario and Luigi took down Bowser. Mr. Pipe grabbed Toad's attention as the Birdface walked over to Wart and leaned down. Yet then, all of the walls around the room began to crack and break as the dark chamber caved in on itself. Toad turned around and he ran. Mr. Pipe knew where he was headed and as if on cue, felt a compulsion to be there with him.
At that moment, all over Petalburg, things started to fall apart. A city street cracked open. Beneath the pavement were pulsating intestine-like organs that burst open and spurt bile. A building vanished, a car on a street corner flew into the air, a telephone box started to spin, faster and faster, digging itself into the concrete. Monstrous vines sprouted from the hole left behind. Geysers of steaming mud spurt into the night sky, black excrement forced up out of a sewer, ran down stone steps. The Muus watched this, and they knew it. The perversion that Wart had created was coming apart.
On the street, Toad ran, clutching the map. He ran towards an ornate black building, tightly hemmed in on both sides by a veritable wall of towers. Moments later, he reached the top of a spiral flight of stairs within the building to an apartment labeled 'H' with a rusted metal letter on the door. Just as Toad stepped forward, the door creaked open, already unlocked.
The rooms were empty, derelict and strewn with rubbish. Mold grew on the damp walls and a door stood at the end of a long empty room. Toad could hear the muffled sounds of surf and seagulls. He started to walk forward but as he approached the door, he began to feel colder. He opened the door and looked out to face a blast of sunlight, a bright blue ocean and the beautiful sky of the nexus. "Toad?" whimpered the voice of Mr. Pipe from behind him. Toad didn't turn, not at first. Instead, he took a single step forward, then another and ran into the sky… but it wasn't there. It was a painted wall. It looked so real, it looked so true just moments ago. How could he have… how could it have… why did he think it was real? He glanced up at a small speaker built into the wall, it was the source of the sea-side sound effects. "There is nothing. Beyond the city. Never has been. Yes?" said Mr. Pipe, as if seeking approval. "Been waiting for you, yes… you see Toad, you need us. You can destroy everything but you need something to replace it with. Without us, your kind cannot exist." Toad just turned and walked past him off into the darkness.
The skyline continued to change. Buildings were collapsing, fires had started burning and the screams were everywhere. The Muus felt terrible, watching so many below die, but they could not intervene, not yet anyways. Petalburg was a real place. It had been different once. Once it was in the world itself, housed in Sarasaland and had been a part of the Toadstool Kingdom. It had been destroyed, just like Keelhaul Key, in conflict and on that day, something happened and it was like to the entire world, even the Muus, that it had always been a part of Subcon, within the nexus. It was like all those who died in Petalburg never did, living on through their imprints in the nexus. So, the screams made them sad, made them afraid, made them childlike, just as they had been when they viciously rid the world of the Mamus. Only they knew better now, Wart had been a tyrant, but if he had done anything good, it was that he had taught them that there were consequences to their innocent cruelty.
In Tinga's Inn, in a small quiet room at the ground floor, much like the one Toad had awoken in, a clock ticked on a wall. "… Its small… but it's clean," said Tinga, although Toad could plainly tell that it was anything but. Nevertheless, he entered. He was haggard, eyes rimmed with red and he still held the small back notebook tight to his chest. He stood silently in the center of the room. Tinga took a look at the devastation out in the middle of the city and shuddered. "Crazy out there tonight."
"I'll take it," whispered Toad, Tinga nodded and left, shutting the door. Toad gently put the notebook down on a table near the open window and pulled out his wallet. He removed the photo of Chanterelle and placed it against the pillow on the bed. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at it with longing. He missed her. He missed her so badly.
It didn't take long for him to fall asleep.
It didn't take long for him to awaken.
He stood and walked over to the sink next to the bed, but he felt sluggish, as if he were moving under water. The curtain of the room was tugged on by breeze and so he stepped to the window, parting the lace curtain with shaking hands. On the outside was a narrow street and that the end of it all, the ocean. The sound of the distant surf seemed genuine and he could swear he could taste the salt spray. Over the horizon, though, he noted the Muus, flying and watching the sun rising as the seven Shelltops from Dream World arrived to protect them forever.
One of them rose then, changing as he became something more than what he was. He glimmered in the sky like a star. Like a New Sun.
He turned briefly to his notebook and smiled when he saw the cover: 'HOW THINGS WORK – BY DANE TOAD, AGE NINE'. A gust of wind blew open the book and pages flickered past. There were glimpses of his drawings as a child, of smiling people, the sun shining down on a blue ocean full of sailing boats and fields of flowers. He couldn't take it any longer and just like that, he was gone.
He walked back through the hallway of the ornate building just as he had only half an hour ago it seemed. Or was it sooner than that? Time seemed oddly fluid at this point, somehow. He moved slowly towards a door by which he noticed Mr. Pipe was slumped. It was the final door, there would be no others beyond this one. The Muus had watched by as he repaired Petalburg in his sleep. He was not like the Mamus, they had noted, where he wanted to take from them. He was not like Wart, where he wanted to hurt them. He was not like the dreaming Pi'illos, where he just wanted to create. He was not like the protal keepers, where he just wanted to patrol the timeline. He just wanted what any man in Subcon truly wanted. He had seen that much as he walked out from Tinga's Inn. "What are you doing!" cried Mr. Pipe, wailing at Toad.
"I'm just changing a few things around here, that's all," insisted Toad and he turned for the door once more. When he opened it? He heard water, waves breaking through the cracks in the floorboards of the hallway. The cracks around the closed door were illuminated by the white-hot gates of the nexus outside. As the door opened, a sharp line of light cut across his features as his eyes blinked and watered. The wind pulled at his messy hair and the surf noise was louder than ever now.
He looked outside with fascination through the door, his eyes traced down along a long wooden pier jutting out into a blue seascape. At the end of the pier stood the figure of a woman with red hair. She looked out at the ocean as if it had always been in Subcon with her back turned to Toad. Standing in the open doorway, Toad squinted into the sun and the gates of the nexus, happy for the first time since he'd woken up. As soon as he stepped out, he felt a weight lifted from his shoulders. Everything was clear and he finally knew exactly what to do. Mr. Pipe tried to edge down the corridor to the open door, but a Muu came and drove him back, forcing him into the shadows once more.
Toad headed down the pier, toward the woman. As he stepped up to her, she turned and smiled. "Beautiful," she told him, looking at the purity of the nexus gates around them. There was hardly even a trace of the cancer that had plagued it left. They were so far, millions and millions of miles away, almost like it was a world away, but it was safe. He nodded slowly, looking slightly out of place with his crumpled white pants, unpolished shoes, ragged red vest and polka cap. He stared out at the ocean around them. The Muus flew over. With light from the burning stars behind them, the distant gates into the nexus reflected off of the waves as they opened up.
"Yes," whispered Toad. "Is Keelhaul Key near here?"
"Across the bay," she said, pointing. "Over there." Toad looked out over the water and saw it, a small idyllic village in the sunlight. He saw the Muus gathering behind it, for an invitation had been sent out and it was time for the invited to finish everything. "I'm Toadette." Toad just smiled and turned away, walking down the pier, headed for the town.
"What's your name?" she asked Toad, calling after him. He turned, looked at her and smiled again.
"Toad… just Toad."