A/N: I'd like to apologize for my extremely long hiatus. I've been busy with school and life and haven't had much time to write a new chapter for Hail to the Chump in ages. I'm sure I've probably lost a few readers along the way, but if you're one of the folks who've been following this fic from the beginning, welcome on back! If you're new to this story, WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING READING THE LAST CHAPTER FIRST?! GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING AND START THERE! …lol, jk.

Anyways, this is kind of a different chapter for HTTC, namely because it's told from Wario's perspective rather than Snake's and it's going to be kind of angsty as well. I'm planning on putting a few Wario-centric chapters in here before the end, so I hope you'll enjoy them.

Enough exposition: it's time to schlock and load!

Like, I totally don't own Smash Brothers, dude. And I'm not claiming ownership of any of the characters (Except for maybe an OC or two) because that would be totally heinous!

Strap yourselves in, dudes and dudettes! Here we go!

…Ugh, I've got to get out of the 90's…

Oh, I should probably warn you that there's some gratuitous references to Wario Land 4 and Wario World in this chapter, not that it'll make much difference anyways to the story overall. Anyhow, let's get on with the show.

Wario smiled. Today was the happiest day of his life.

It was a beautiful April morning in Washington; he was sitting on the shore of the Tidal Basin, beneath the pinkish-white canopy of a cherry blossom tree in full bloom. There was a faint breeze in the air that morning that made the branches of the tree sway ever so slightly, shaking free loose petals, causing them to lazily drift to the ground below like flakes of hot-pink snow.

Wario sighed contentedly as he watched the falling petals. It was so nice to get away from that damned desk and leave all that paperwork for another time. It was so good to forget about the world and his job for awhile and just enjoy his time with her.

She was sitting next to him, with her head on his chest. Her long hair was pink, just like the cherry blossoms falling all around them. Her eyes were closed and there was a peaceful smile spread across her face. She looked just like an angel.

Princess Shokora. His princess: the woman that he loved more than anything else in the entire world (next to money, of course).

Of all the treasures he had ever found in life, she was the greatest; better than a thousand bars of solid gold, better than finding a mother lode of silver, better than that evil black jewel that destroyed his castle, turned all of his treasures into monsters and tried to kill him years back, better than that cursed Faberge egg that he found that could kill anyone who touched it and caused its victims to cough out a real egg with their dying breaths, better than—well, you get the picture.

It had been so long since they had last seen each other, so long since that fateful day the two of them had escaped from that collapsing golden pyramid deep in the heart of the jungle. Wario could still remember how he and Shokora—who was trapped in the form of a black cat—stood on that cliff and watched as the ancient pyramid sunk into the earth. The two of them had shared a laugh, happy to have escaped death and just be alive. It was not long after that the millennia old curse that had been placed upon Shokora by the hideous Golden Diva was broken and she returned to her true form.

Wario could still remember how awestruck he had been when he first saw Shokora. He had never seen a woman who had ever looked as beautiful as she did before, and he had never seen one who was more so afterward. Never in a million years had he suspected that that mangy black cat that followed him around the whole time he was down inside the pyramid was actually a princess.

And what a princess she was.

His heart was pounding like a jackhammer after she had kissed him on the cheek, thanking him for saving her as if he were some brave knight in a tale from years long past (thankfully, this knight's tale was completely unlike that one with Heath Ledger and thus lacked an anachronistic soundtrack and gratuitous product placements for Nike).

Wario had felt so giddy that day, like a hyperactive kid in a candy store who was climbing on the ceiling of said candy store like a deranged Spider-Man with a crazed look on his face and a lollipop sticking out of his mouth as his parents watched from below in helpless dismay. He had discovered countless riches and treasures inside the Golden Pyramid, but he now had found something that seemed to make all of those things pale in comparison.

His head spun with all manner of crackpot ideas and schemes in that moment. His mind was filled with visions of him and the princess spending the rest of their days together, ruling over a vast kingdom in grandeur and opulence, standing on a beach hand in hand and watching as the sun sank beneath the waves, drinking martinis in a pool full of caviar, creating an ingenious real estate scam involving high-priced condominiums built along the Amazon River in an area populated by a hostile tribe of cannibals and raising a gaggle of hideous children who all had Wario's nose and moustache among other pointless fantasies.

But all of those dreams were shattered as Wario had watched in silent horror as Princess Shokora was taken up into heaven in a beam of light, flanked by a countless multitude of angels. He had sat there for time immeasurable long after she had disappeared, feeling like he had been stabbed in the heart. Just when he had finally thought he had gotten his big break, just when he had found the greatest treasure of all, she had been taken away from him. Sure, he had found thousands of gold coins and all kinds of priceless treasures to add to his coffers, but without Shokora, it felt like his quest had been all for nothing. What could have been the biggest payoff of all time had turned into one of his most crushing defeats.

He always found himself thinking about Shokora in the years that followed. He wondered what his life would have been like if she hadn't gone away. He often would waste away countless hours wistfully in thought, thinking of the life that they could have had together. He had tried so many times to bury his memory of her by seeking comfort in his riches and by going on adventures in search of more treasures, but it was no use. No matter how hard he tried, he could never forget about her, and he could never find anything that could ever possibly compare to her.

Even after he had become president and had assumed all of the pressures and anxieties that came with the job, she was always on his mind. How he would have loved to have had her by his side that cold winter's day he marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, his heart full of triumph and happiness, back when the people adored him and treated him like he was a god. How he wished she had been with him in the last few months, when he sat alone in the darkness, weighed down by crisis after crisis, plummeting approval ratings and increasing dissent within his own party. If she could only have been there to hold him in her arms and tell him that it would all be alright in the end…

Wario had spent years wondering why Shokora had left. Over the decades, he had constructed many complicated theories to explain why; theories that were so detailed, rambling and paranoid in nature that they almost seemed like they had been created by the same guys who put that show on the History Channel about how JFK had been assassinated by a group of ancient aliens disguised as Bigfoot who were the last remnants of the lost civilization of Atlantis and had originally created the pyramids to serve as giant cheese graters. Yet despite his many theories, he could never come up with an answer that truly satisfied him.

He had all but given up hope of ever seeing her again as the days turned to months and years. And yet, here she was, sitting with him. He had no idea how she had come back, and part of him really didn't care about the how or the why. After all of the hell he had been through in just the last year alone, all that really mattered right now was that she was here with him again. All the days he wasted wallowing in misery were over. His princess had come home.

Shokora lifted her head up from Wario's chest, her eyelids fluttering, revealing a shining pair of brilliant blue eyes. She shifted her posture so that her back was resting against the trunk of the cherry blossom tree. Wario glanced at her, smiling. She looked even more beautiful than the day he first saw her. She returned the smile, the breeze gently ruffling her hair.

He took her left hand in his right and looked back at the vista of falling blossoms, sighing.

"Oh, Wario…" said the princess, her voice dreamy. "I wish we could stay like this forev—"

"SIE SIND DAS ESSEN UND WIR SIND DIE JÄGER!"

"MAMA MIA!"

Wario's eyes shot open, the visions of the cherry blossoms and Shokora vanishing in an instant. With a jolt, he sat up, his rotund form drenched in sweat. He was gasping and panting for air like a sow in labor that was being waterboarded. His eyes were wide in terror and had that spaced-out anime character look. His ears were full of the sounds of ominous German chanting and distorted Japanese lyrics.

It took him a moment to gather his bearings. Once he was in a somewhat calmer state, he looked around. He wasn't beneath the boughs of the cherry blossoms with his beloved; he was in his presidential bedroom, sitting up in his presidential bed, wrapped in his presidential bed sheet that had an embroidered presidential seal on it.

The president let out an audible curse. Just a dream, he thought ruefully with a shake of his head. Just when he thought that his lonely days were done, that his princess had come back to him at last, it was nothing more than another useless fantasy.

Fighting back tears, he turned to his right. The morning sun was shining through the nearby windows, signaling the dawn of a new day. Another miserable, lonely, stressful day. He sighed heavily.

He then glanced down to the nightstand next to the bed and beheld the infernal thing that had awoken him. It was a clock, cast in the shape of a gruesome, grinning monstrosity with a skinless face made entirely of muscle. Between the shiny teeth of the beast was an LCD screen that read in flickering, flame like orange: 6:30 A.M. High energy music poured forth from speakers located on the back of the head shaped clock.

With a snarl, Wario brought a meaty palm down on the top of the clock, replacing the music with five seconds of high-pitched adolescent screaming. As much as he was tempted to body slam the blasted thing to bits for disturbing him, he couldn't bring himself to do so. The clock had been a housewarming gift from the previous president, a man whom Wario greatly admired as both a peer and a friend. He had left the clock on his desk along with a note on Inauguration Day, giving some words of encouragement to the new president. The former president had said that he had bought the clock while in Japan once and that it was supposed to be a character from some show over there called Shin Achy or Achy Shins or something along those lines. Even though it was ugly as sin (even by Wario's standards) and always scared the crap out of him, Wario considered it to be a token of mutual friendship between the two of them. No matter how bad he felt like pummeling the thing some days, he always held himself back for that reason alone.

The mustached man worked his way out of the bed and stepped into a pair of green loafers. He walked to his bedroom door, opened it and waddled down the hall to his presidential bathroom, where he took care of some unofficial presidential business. When that was done, he went up to the sink and washed the sweat off of his ugly mug (many liberal pundits have noted that Wario's skin is so naturally greasy that it contains enough oil to power America for at least a hundred years, thus making the Iraq War completely unnecessary).

As he dried off his face with one of his presidential towels, Wario looked at himself in the mirror. Years back, he had heard about how being president could make you look older, due to the amount stress involved in the job.

Now he could see firsthand that the stories were true.

Here and there, his brown hair was streaked gray. Likewise, white was beginning to mottle his once completely jet black mustache. Around his eyes were dark circles and underneath hung heavy bags. His face, once the grinning, studly countenance of a millionaire playboy, was growing more and more wrinkled, with lines appearing around his mouth and forehead, and crow's feet spreading out from the corner of his eyes like river deltas. He had only been president for three years and already he looked horrible.

Wario put his hands down on the bathroom counter and stared down into the sink's basin. He sighed, mentally repeating the same question he had been asking himself every day for the past year:

Why am I doing this?

He could plainly see—and feel—what it was doing to him. He had given himself an ulcer four months ago because he had been so stressed over the continuing fallout from nearly going to war with Canada. He also found himself struggling off and on with bouts of insomnia due to numerous other issues and concerns. He even had to check himself in to the White House Medical Unit once because he had severe chest pain from upsetting himself over some stupid partisan wrangling going on in Congress.

He hated being president. He hated how it made him look; he hated how it made him feel. He hated waking up every day and going through the same grind. He hated feeling like the weight of the entire world was bearing down on his shoulders. He hated how he could never just relax and how it always seemed that some new crisis would start just as another would end. He hated everything about it. How anyone could do this job for four, or even eight years, without having a nervous breakdown was a mystery to him.

And yet, despite all this, he had just announced the day before in his weekly radio address that he intended to seek a second term. He had even started gathering private donations weeks in advance to fund his reelection campaign!

Was he insane? He knew deep down that this job would kill him eventually, so why did he still want it so badly? What could possibly make him want to keep throwing away his life like this?

Wario looked up at his reflection. With a frustrated snarl and a wave of his hand, he stormed out of the bathroom. He didn't have time for this. He had to get moving; it was almost time for his morning workout.

Marching down the hall, he went into his room, slipped a pair of gray yoga pants over his black boxers with golden dollar sign print and changed out of his sweat-stained a-shirt and into a gray tank top. He cast a glance over at the clock: 6:40. Just ten minutes to go before the workout session began.

Wario ran out of his room and down the halls as fast as his stubby legs could carry him. Several aides wished him a good morning as he plowed into them and sent them flying as he continued on his hajj to the gym.

It was going to be another long day…