A/N: Ugh, this chapter was murder to write; I thought I was never going to finish this thing. Feel free to criticize it all you want.

Anyhow, this is the last Wario-centric chapter for a while. We'll be seeing Solid Snake once again in the next several chapters, but Wario will making a few more appearances before this thing ends (Hopefully it will end before I turn forty, judging by the ridiculously long time it takes me to write anything).

Also, I wanted to address an issue regarding the location of the Oval Office in Wario's White House. See, when I first started writing this story, I actually had little idea of the layout of the White House, so I made several errors regarding the rooms (The biggest one in the original draft was where I combined the White House and the Capitol Building!). In actuality, the Oval Office is on the ground floor of the White House, whereas in Hail to the Chump it is located on the second floor. In order to explain this error, my headcanon tells me that Wario converted the Yellow Oval Room into the Oval Office because he liked the view and/or had it moved because he was paranoid for some reason.

Alright, enough jawin'. Let's get on with the show.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon. Wario was standing on the Truman Balcony, looking out on the South Lawn and doing his best to block out the distant shouts of the protesting crowds that were gathered outside the gates of the White House. It was a habit of his, to come out here in the late afternoon or early evening during the summer in a meager attempt to raise his weary spirit after a long hard day, a little something to try to remind himself that there was more to life than that miserable thing he called his job.

He felt so tired; he had spent most of the day in cabinet meetings, intelligence meetings, staff meetings, meetings about upcoming meetings and had just finished enduring an intense hour and a half session with congressional leaders over the most recent legislative brouhaha on Capitol Hill. He also had spent nearly two hours having phone conversations with administration lackeys, various congressmen and other Washington insiders.

Wario sighed. He would have thought after nearly a full term in office that he would be used to the hustle and bustle, that maybe he would've finally settled into the crazy race that was his job. But no; he always felt worn down by this time of day, like there was a shrieking, seven hundred pound monkey on his back that wanted to do nothing except pull his hair, drive him insane and maybe bite his thumbs off for good measure. He had long ago concluded that being president was just like being bitten by a vampire (an experience he was unfortunately familiar with); it was agonizing, painful and gradually sucked you dry until you felt like you were nothing more than a withered, lifeless husk.

But Wario wasn't just tired; there was something that was bothering him, and it wasn't the fact that there were hundreds of angry protestors thronged around the White House, or the terse words exchanged during the congressional meeting earlier, or that Time Magazine had twice named him worst president ever, or that cartoon he had seen in today's New Yorker that featured a caricature of himself with horns and a goatee kicking an old lady off the edge of a cliff as he laughed manically, tore a copy of the constitution in half and stood on a tattered, faded map of the United States as Washington D.C. burned in the background.

All of these things were equally disturbing in their own unique ways, but what was troubling the president at the moment was an issue that was just as upsetting and perplexing.

An image began to form in his mind. He could see it clearly, like it had just happened this morning… oh wait, it did just happen this morning. My bad.

"Uwaah! I'm-a gonna be late!"

The girl ran as fast her legs could carry her down the streets of Yokohama. She was a typical archetypical anime schoolgirl, thin and pretty with an annoying high-pitched voice that sounded like a twelve year old who had been huffing the fumes from a helium tank for a couple of hours nonstop. However, there was one trait of this particular schoolgirl that set her apart from the rest of her ilk: she, unlike most anime characters, had a nose. A weird thing it was, looking like a big fat head of garlic dipped in a vat filled with Pepto-Bismol. Beneath it grew a moustache, a wild and jagged outgrowth that looked like a long bolt of lightning slathered in tar.

She was running late for school. She barely had any time to slip into her seifuku or even eat breakfast for that matter, evidenced by the fact that there was a loaf of garlic bread slathered in artery clogging margarine hanging out of her mouth.

She jumped over a sleeping dog and looked down at her watch. She had only two minutes to spare before the bell rang. She continued on her frantic dash, the world suddenly freezing into an incredibly well drawn dramatic anime-like still scene as an awesome J-Popesque guitar riff played.

"Warui Waruyo, 56! Starting today, I'm-a gonna be the president!"

Wario snapped out of his trance and shook his head in confusion, knocking away the scene. He sighed and shook his head again. That's-a what I get for-a watching all of those cartoons the former president told-a me to watch, he admonished himself. Sure, a lot of them were pretty good, but they had a tendency to screw with his head and cause him to sometimes have crazy dreams or act weirdly, like the one time he was in a meeting and inexplicably jumped up on top of the desk and began to shout "Moshi moshi, Wario desu!"

That sort of thing didn't happen as frequently as it had in the past, but it still was annoying whenever it occur.

Sighing and shaking his head again, he looked over at one of the chairs that sat on the balcony and began to stare at it for no reason at all. He stood motionless, staring with bulging eyes that were growing about as fast as the national debt does in a single day. Once his pupils were about as large two overly ripe grapefruits, a strange sound like wind blowing through a barren hollow was heard, signaling it was time for a pointless Lost-esque flashback to begin.

Wario drummed his fingers impatiently on the surface of his desk as he stared up at the ceiling. He had ordered a vegetarian sub from a certain restaurant chain that took great pride in its supposedly fast delivery times, and he was beginning to feel very annoyed. It was 11:45; he had placed his order three minutes ago. By now, he should have said meal sitting in front of him, with the smell of freshly baked bread rising to his nostrils like a candy wrapper caught in a updraft and have hundreds of little green pieces of dying vegetables stuck in his teeth. And yet, here he was, sans en sandwich with his stomach half-empty and crying out its protest like a downtrodden Dor-Mart employee trying to get by on a measly 75 cents an hour.

He let out an angered snarl. This is-a last time I fall-a for scams like-a this, he thought bitterly as he now was browsing Amazon on his WarioPad for some end of summer deals to kill time. "Oooh! Deluxe Roombas with-a special modifications!" He said cheerfully. He gasped. "For-a fifty percent off!" He gasped again. "For-a sale by a third party seller! I gotta buy it now!"

He placed his order, which is of no real relevance to our narrative other than to serve as a lead-in for a future storyline.

Shortly after this, a delivery boy clad in a nondescript black uniform came dashing through the doors of the Oval Office. He was probably only seventeen, had frizzy red hair, bad acne and would likely never get a prom date based on those facts because people judge others too much on physical appearance in our society nowadays.

"Johnnie Jay's Subs!" he announced in a fast-paced voice that sounded like it was ripped out of a Depression-era newsreel. "Freakin' Fast Fresh Delivery So Fast You'll Flip!" He threw the plastic container that he was carrying like a plastic javelin in a child's game of decathlon and it landed soundly on the president's desk with a richly resonant yet gut wrenching whump.

The boy quickly ran up to Wario who was staring at the container on his desk, silently amazed that it hadn't broken open upon landing on the desk. "That'll be $25.77!" he jabbered in his irritating tone. Wario grudgingly fished some money out of his pants and handed it to the teenager, who ran back to the door like his posterior was on fire.

"Enjoy your sub, have a nice day and stay Freakin' Fast and Fresh!" he rattled as he made his way out the room.

Wario looked down at the container, his annoyance being swallowed up by his feelings of hunger. He opened it, took the six-inch sub out and unwrapped it from its shroud of wax paper. It was a vegetarian sub, just as he had ordered (or rather, as what Wii Fit Trainer had forced him to order).

He lifted the sandwich up to his mouth and was about to take a bite out of it, when he suddenly realized that there was something wrong.

There were no alfalfa sprouts. And he loved alfalfa sprouts.

Well, to be fair, he originally hated them because Wii Fit Trainer had forced him to eat them for some kind of health benefits, but he had come to love them in time because they were green like money and crunchy too.

Not that money is crunchy, but you get my point.

Wario's ire began to rise once again. First, the delivery was anything but fast and now they didn't even put alfalfa sprouts on the blasted sandwich?

In anger, he put down the sandwich and reached for the phone in order to give the manager of Johnnie Jay's a profanity laced piece of his mind. Before he could do this, the doors swung open once more. It was the delivery boy again.

"I'm so sorry, Mr. President!" he apologized quickly. "I forgot to give you your Dr. Pepper!" He hurled the Styrofoam cup he was holding and it hit Wario squarely in the face, drenching him from head to toe in tooth rotting carbonation.

The kid made a grimace and sped away quickly. "Sorry about that, sir! Have a good one, now!" He called from down the hall.

Wario could feel his urge to kill rising. His eyes became wide and got that spaced out look that a fangirl gets when she hears that her favorite book is being turned into a major motion picture. It felt as if time had come to a complete stop as the color immediately drained out of everything for some reason, painting the world in a dull and eerie monochrome. There was also the faint sound of chimes jangling in the distance, accompanied by the quiet gusting of wind…

Wario could feel his pupils beginning to shrink back to their normal, rat sized proportions as he drifted back into the present. He shook his head, blinked once, twice, and realized that those chimes playing in his flashback had morphed into the sound of the telephone ringing on his desk.

He turned away from the South Lawn and walked up to the door leading to the Oval Office. He opened it and stepped through, the chilling sensation of air conditioning greeted him like a long lost friend. He shut the door behind him and walked towards his desk.

He looked at the white plastic thing that was his telephone; there was a red light on the dial that was lit up like a barn in a pyromaniac's daydream, indicating that the call was on his private line.

He shuddered, something in the back of his mind telling him that this call was anything but good news. He eased himself down into his chair and picked up the receiver. He swallowed.

"Wario."

"Wario," said a gravelly voice in a flat tone. "It's Morgan Kershaw."

The president silently cursed. Whenever the Federalist National Committee's chairman called him up, it was never usually to exchange pleasantries or talk about the weather.

"Morgan!" said Wario in a tone that exuded phony excitement and belied the fact that deep within his psyche he could feel his inner goddess screaming for Aquaman to come save him. "It's-a so good to talk you! How's-a your wife holding up?"

"She's dead," the older man spat. "She died six months ago. You didn't even bother sending flowers to her funeral."

Wario tugged at his collar and made a nervous noise. "Ah… hehehe, sorry about-a that. You know how thin-a the budget's-a stretched up here…"

"Let's just cut the crap already," Kershaw said impatiently, his voice full of bitterness. "You know what I'm calling about."

"Oh right," said Wario in a chipper voice, lamely trying to keep himself from sounding as terrified as he felt inside. "You must-a be calling about-a my announcement yesterday."

Kershaw sighed at the other end of the line. "Let me tell you something, Wario." Immediately, Wario opened a desk drawer, took out a Snickers bar and started munching on it, regardless of what kind of retribution Wii Fit Trainer would inflict upon him later. When Kershaw started talking, it was almost impossible to shut him up. He could go on and on about nothing for hours at length, as if he was a living incarnation of an episode of Seinfeld.

"Me and the party, we had a vision. We—"Kershaw stopped for a moment as the sound of loud crunching could be heard through the speaker. "Are you eating a candy bar?"

Wario chewed on a piece of the bar and swallowed. "Yes, I'm-a eating a candy bar, mother," he said sarcastically. He then broke a piece off of the confectionery and snorted it up a nostril so Roachie could get his fair share and not feel left out. You wouldn't believe how high maintenance a cockroach living in your brain can be.

Kershaw groaned in agitation and then continued on.

"We dreamed of an America where progress wasn't just empty talk and broken promises," he said through the crunching and smacking at the other end. "We wanted to be a force that would truly make a difference in the lives of Americans. We dreamed of an America where all people would truly be considered equals, where the class warfare perpetuated by the left and right for so long would be a thing of the past. We dreamed of an America where taxes were reasonable and prosperity would not be something reserved just for a privileged few."

He paused for a moment. "And most importantly of all, we dreamed of an America where the stranglehold of the two-party system, which has done nothing but obscure the American Dream behind a smokescreen of special interests and political demagoguery, was broken. We dreamed of the day that bloated, useless entity was just a painful memory in this nation's history."

Wario continued chewing on the candy bar, making note of how many times Kershaw had said the word 'dream' during his little speech and wondering to himself if he happened to be reading all of this off of the Federalist Party website's mission statement page.

"We tried for so many years to get our message out to Americans," Kershaw waxed on, like a highly politicized version of Daniel Larusso, "to let them know that they didn't have to settle for the status quo, but for some reason our ideas never seemed to catch on. People were tired of the antics of both the Democrats and the Republicans and always talked about how they wished there was a viable third party, but when one finally came along, they chose to ignore it. They thought we were crazy; that we were dreamers, fantasizing about a world that could never be." He sighed. "It's so sad to think that it took a zombie apocalypse and a bipartisan tax hike to convince them otherwise."

Wario rolled his eyes as he finished the last of his Snickers bar. Maybe the Federalists should have considered utilizing all of Kershaw's hot air as a fuel source since they always acted like they were so passionate about alternative energy.

"Finally, we managed to gain some ground. We took the House; we would have taken the Senate too, had it not been for a few meddling Republicans and their dog." Kershaw stopped for a moment to mentally reprimand himself. I knew I shouldn't have watched that Scooby Doo marathon last night.

Wario paid no attention to Kershaw's remark; he was too busy probing his left nostril, cleaning out the remnants of his snack he had given to Roachie.

"But this was only the beginning," continued Kershaw, his voice beginning to take on a crazed, almost hypnotic tone. "These gains were nothing more than the foundation for what we truly sought: the White House. It seemed like easy enough of a goal, based on our successes in Congress, but that brass ring remained as elusive as ever." He chuckled darkly. "An old guy like me doesn't exactly inspire a great deal of confidence in people, if you know what I mean."

Wario reached into the open desk drawer, took out a toothpick and picked his teeth with it. He sure hoped Kershaw would get to the point soon.

"That's why we approached you, Wario. You were just what we needed to ensure our victory. You had the momentum; you had the charisma to pull it off. The public loved you. People were practically worshipping your farts, for God's sake. If anyone could win the White House for the Federalists, it was you."

Wario threw the toothpick at the wall, neatly spearing a spider that was climbing down it. No doubt that PETA would shortly be sending him some nasty letters about that. "Yeah?" he said impatiently.

"And you did win," replied Kershaw. "All those weeks we spent shaping you into the ideal candidate, all of the time me and the others spent coaching you, it all paid off in the end."

Wario rolled his eyes. "Of course it-a paid off," he said, his voice full of annoyance. "I wouldn't-a be sitting here if it-a hadn't."

"Look," the older man said exasperatedly, "I'm just trying to do a dramatic buildup here, so cut me some slack, will you?"

The president made a disgusted noise. His right ear was beginning to hurt from all of Kershaw's endless yammering.

"Things were going so smoothly during your first few months in office," continued Kershaw. "It seemed like our vision for this country would finally come to fruition. We were happy, Americans were happy. Everyone was happy, happy, happy." He facepalmed. And then I had to go and watch those reruns of Duck Dynasty, too…

After taking a couple seconds to recover from his embarrassment, he said in a voice dripping with malice, "And then you went off the rails."

Wario was now playing Tetris with his free hand on a classic Game Boy, trying to beat his high score and keep himself from having a nervous breakdown at the same time. "Uh huh," he said disinterestedly.

"You gave voting rights to zombies!" bellowed Kershaw in a voice that temporarily startled Wario out of the bored stupor he had fallen into. "You put a six percent tax on school lunches! You killed the Prime Minister of Canada! You…"

45 minutes later…

Wario was still playing Tetris, and Kershaw was still hollering like a dog without a bone.

"…Your alternative energy program destroyed half of Wyoming! You raised taxes to the highest level that they've been in over a century! And don't even get me started on…"

2 hours and 57 minutes later…

Wario was still sitting at his desk, his eyes bloodshot and beginning to feel like they were going to explode at any minute. He could feel Roachie restlessly crawling around inside his head like a toddler in a ball pen, sharing in the agony of his master. The batteries of his Game Boy had died long ago, severing him from what little distraction he could use to entertain himself.

Wario's left eye twitched nervously; there was a leprechaun standing in the corner with a twisted smile spread across his face. He was sharpening a rusty knife on a stone as a merry tune played on a tin whistle.

"Just you wait till you fall asleep, lad," said the leprechaun in a demented voice, squinting one of his eyes as he examined the blade. "That's when the real fun'll begin."

"Mama mia!" exclaimed a startled Wario. He shook his head, the frightful vision fading away like fairy dust in the morning sun.

Kershaw hadn't noticed Wario's outburst or had chosen to ignore it; he was still going at it, although he was starting to run out of breath.

"…And worst of all," he said, breathing heavily from his nearly three hour screamathon, "you appointed Snoop Dogg Chief Justice of the Supreme Court! He's not a judge, he's a rapper!"

"Hey, he told-a me he had a few brushes with-a the law!" countered Wario. "Doesn't that-a count?"

The other man made a shuddering groan. "That means he was arrested, you moron!"

Wario let out a snarl, realizing that Kershaw had shot down his argument with metaphorical bullets of truth. "I just-a liked the fact that-a he always says-a izzle all-a the time, okay?"

Kershaw sighed angrily. "And to believe I used to think Carter and Bush were incompetent…"

"There was a reason why-a you called me, right, Morgan?"

"Yes, Wario," Kershaw said coldly. "There is a reason I called you today. And the reason is this: me and the party, we're sick of you. You have singlehandedly undone everything we had ever hoped to accomplish and dragged our good name through the mud in the process. And we've had enough of it."

Kershaw licked his lips and leaned forward in his chair, as if he was looking into the president's eyes. A crafty smile spread across his lips; he had waited so long for this moment.

"That's why we're refusing to renominate you," he said, his glasses glinting in the anime way.

Wario's mouth hung open. "W-what? You… you can't-a do this to-a me! I'm-a the president!" He shouted, pounding a fist on his desk.

"We can and we will," said the chairman in a voice colder than ice. "I've been in talks with the delegates and party leaders from across the country for the last few months, and we've come to a decision: you've got to go. We can't very well throw our support behind someone who's trying to undermine our agenda every step of the way, now can we?"

"This is-a outrageous!" raged Wario, pounding on his poor desk more and more. "I'm-a the president! You can't-a push me around like-a this!"

Kershaw laughed. "Oh, this is rich! But then again, you always did act like you were a king. Like everyone was your serf and you could just order them around and do whatever you wanted. You seem to be forgetting that without us, you'd be nothing more than a fat old man selling meat-flavored deodorant."

Wario became completely unglued. "OLD MAN? OLD MAN?!" Steam shot out of his ears like an angered, anthropomorphized teapot and his eyes bulged in fury. He could feel several capillaries breaking as anger coursed through him like a river of rage. "WHO ARE –A YOU CALLING AN OLD MAN YOU…"

Wario then launched into a profanity laced tirade that would have put Alec Baldwin to shame and Richard Nixon could never have hoped to censor like so many Watergate tape transcripts. Two White House staffers walked past the shut doors of the Oval Office and overheard the muffled, angry tumult.

"Do you think he's fighting with the manager from Johnnie Jay's again?" whispered one.

"Either that or he's recording a gangster rap album," replied the other. "Or he got Ashley to summon the ghost of George Carlin and he's doing his best Wario impression."

The first speaker shook his head. "There's just no telling with that man…"

Back inside the Oval Office, things had begun to become a bit more family friendly. In fact, they were so family friendly that representatives from the Dove Foundation put their patented Family Approved Seal™©® on the front of Wario's desk.

"You told-a me that-a the party was-a behind me one hundred percent! And now you go and-a do this-a to me?!"

Kershaw chuckled. "Come on, Wario. You should know by now that you can't trust anything anyone tells you in this town. Besides, I promised you all that before you went and screwed up everything for us. Remember the midterms last fall? Consider this as payback for that and everything else. It's only fair. You ruined us, now we're going to ruin you."

"Ruin me?" asked Wario, his voice dripping venom. "I'm-a the president, Kershaw. I have-a powers that-a no one else does. I could do all sorts of-a things to make-a your life very unpleasant. Don't-a think I can't-a hurt you."

"Hmmm. 'Don't think I can't hurt you.' That sounds like a pretty good sound bite for the boys in the press to have some fun with," said Kershaw, amusement in his voice. "Be a shame if something like that were to get leaked…"

"[Expletive deleted]!" The Dove Foundation representatives immediately appeared and removed the Family Approved Seal™©® from the front of Wario's desk only to dematerialize in a very Star Trekesque way.

The older man laughed raucously. "I'm kidding! I'm kidding! I'm not one to play dirty like that. Besides, I could have so much more fun destroying you legitimately than hitting you below the belt like that anyway."

"What do you mean?" asked the president suspiciously.

"You're a smart man, Wario" said Kershaw, stifling a snicker. "You know very well what that means. If the party refuses to renominate you, that means we'll have to go find ourselves a new candidate. You know, one that actually agrees with our principles."

The man gave an exasperated sigh. "I'm so disappointed in you, Wario," he said as he reached into the candy dish on his desk and took out a caramel. "You had so much potential to be a great president. But you had to go and stab everyone in the back and let your own selfishness get in the way. And now, you're going to suffer because of that."

"Do you-a think I'm-a just-a going to sit back and-a let you walk all over me like-a this?" said Wario threateningly.

"In a word, yes," Kershaw said matter-of-factly as he unwrapped the hard sweet and held it up by his desk lamp so that it shone like a piece of primeval amber. "There's not much you can do when your own party's turned on you and you've got a thirteen percent approval rating. It's kind of like being a rattlesnake without any fangs; you can look dangerous and shake your rattle as much as you want, but it won't do you any good in the end. You've got no real power; all you can do is just intimidate the other animals, at least until one of them finds out the truth."

The world fell silent for a moment, as Wario was simmering in his own rage and Kershaw was studying his candy like it was a priceless gem of some sort and, admittedly, that the author had run out of things to say at that point and just wanted to end the chapter already after writing the blasted thing off and on for nearly five months.

"Well," said Kershaw in a slightly upbeat voice forty seconds later. "I think that about covers it all." He popped the caramel into his mouth and said in a cheery, garbled voice, "Good night, Mr. President." The phone disconnected.

Wario furiously slammed the receiver down and then leaned back in his chair. He rubbed his eyes and groaned; the same weariness that had been weighing him down all day just got even heavier.