"AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!"

Such was the first word that announced Yoshi's duly arrival into the world of the conscious. He threw off his covers and sprang into a sitting position, chest swelling and sagging in great heaves and thrusts. The streams of daffodil sunlight were brutal on his comatose eyes, and Yoshi threw his hands over them as he struggled to regulate his breathing.

"It was all a dream," he gasped to himself in between the rattles of long, well-deserved intakes of breath. "All just… A crazy nightmare…"

"It… Wasn't," came a small voice from beside him.

"Gaaaaahhh!" Yoshi wrenched his hands away from his eyes and turned to the source of the voice. Samus was sitting by his side, closing a book and throwing it to a bedside dresser. Before Yoshi could jump out of the bed and recoil away from her in horror, Samus held up both hands and cried, "Yoshi! Just – calm down, alright? I swear I'm not here to hurt you, so – take a deep breath, lie back down and relax." She reached forward, and, ignoring the flinch that visibly shook Yoshi's entire body, grabbed his left hand and squeezed it tight. "Just… Relax."

That he did, and as his jumpiness wore off, as peace restored order in his mind, Yoshi realized that he was not in his room, but in one of the wards behind the main office of the Doctor's Office. He had come here only once before, when he, Ness, Toon Link, and the Ice Climbers paid Lucas a visit after he broke his leg back on Nowhere Islands… But to think that he would actually be a patient here, be lying in the cold, lonely beds isolated from so much of the chaos and the liveliness of the Smash Mansion… Yoshi gulped. The ball of saliva rolled off his tongue, tricked down his throat, passed through his – tongue!

"It's back!" Yoshi screamed in pure jubilation as he unfurled his beloved, sorely missed organ from his oral orifice. There it was, the long, thick, meaty strip of flesh, dripping with spit and wagging to and fro like the tail of a dog, as though in exhibition of mutual joy at being reunited with its master. Yoshi hugged it dearly to his chest; Samus, slightly out of respect, largely out of disgust, looked out the window to spare the heartfelt reunion the obstruction of her observation.

"I missed you so, so, much," Yoshi choked. "So… So… Much…"

Silence.

"So," Yoshi finally spoke up again as he turned to Samus; she turned back to meet his quizzical gaze. "Everything… All that I'm remembering right now… It happened?"

Samus nodded solemnly. "Everything."

"So… So the trap with the poison, the saw, the… The pie, it all happened?"

"The poi – I mean – well, yeah. Basically."

"And… My tongue, being cut off and burned to a crisp. That… That happened as well?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it did."

"And… Getting surprised buttsecksed by a tongue, that happened too?"

"Um… No? That… That probably was a dream."

"Oh."

Samus wasn't sure, but she thought he sounded disappointed.

Silence, again.

"Ness was here just an hour ago," Samus started the conversation when Yoshi didn't say a word. "We've been taking turns to visit you, because – well, because he's pretty scared of me right now, frankly speaking." She hesitated, then managed a forced, weak smile. "You – you tell him mean ol' Samus isn't thinking of plotting any more devious revenges anytime soon. Can you do that for me?"

Yoshi was looking down at his tongue, flexing the powerful muscle and tasting the vibrations and molecules of the lemon-scented air. Then he zipped it back in and, completely disregarding Samus's last few words, said, "How – how the hell did you fix this? I – I thought my tongue was a goner! I thought I'd never be able to taste or speak, ever again…"

"You can thank Doctor Mario for that," Samus sighed as she sat back on her chair. "Took one good look at you, locked me out of your room, and in just under an hour, he was out and you and your tongue were as good as new."

"But – but it was burned. Like, twentieth-degree burned. You saw that. How – I mean, is this – is this really my tongue? It's not some replacement, is it?"

"I-a told you, Yoshi," quipped Doctor Mario as he seemingly appeared out of nowhere, "compared to Olimar's cancer, your condition was-a nothing. All I had to do was to pass your tongue through my Freezie Genetic Reconstructuring Machine, and then-a I simply stitched your tongue back to your mouth. It's-a so simple!"

"Oh." Yoshi watched as Doctor Mario shook his head. "Well, thanks a lot, Mario – you really saved –"

"It's-a Doctor Mario!" Doctor Mario shouted, walking off with an angry huff and shooting Yoshi a sideways glare. "A-get it right, you ungrateful dinosaur!"

"He seems pissed," Yoshi commented as he watched the doctor march out of the ward with a scornful turn of his head and roll of his eyes.

"Kind of my fault," Samus smirked as she folded her arms behind her head in a makeshift pillow. "He really was reluctant to work on you. Had to use some particularly hard convincing to get him to your room."

"How'd you do it?"

"I threatened to open his closet," was her simple reply.

"Ah." She was referring to the great oak closet he kept in the back of his office, and Yoshi silently cursed himself for not thinking of such an elegant solution. How else was Mario able to slip into his classic cap and overalls so easily within the privacy of his office, once he had no patients? "Yeah, that'd do it."

Silence, yet again.

Yoshi, at one point, opened his mouth, twisted it into a weird shape, scraped out an indistinguishable croon, and then settled for once again admiring the presence of his tongue with his hands. Samus tapped her foot against the floor, leaning slightly forward with an elbow on her thigh. She cleared her throat and made to speak, when –

"Why won't you kiss it?!"

Yoshi and Samus turned to the exit where Mario had disappeared through only seconds before. Wolf and Sonic had their backs turned to a desperate-looking Luigi, who tried to stop Wolf with a restraining hand on the latter's shoulder. Yoshi saw that Luigi was wearing a singlet instead of the nurse's uniform or the more usual overalls, and, though he couldn't quite see what the red circle on his right arm enclosed, could plainly guess the function of such a marking and the choice of clothes.

"Get off me, you needy creep!" Wolf snapped as he threw Luigi's arm off of him. "We stopped being OOC in service of humor a long time ago! Why aren't you back to normal?!"

"What OOC?" Luigi cried as he tried again to stop Wolf's and Sonic's departure from the hospital room, this time by blocking the entranceway with his entire body. "I don't understand!"

"Ah, go fuck a pig or something, Luigi. No one cares about you," Sonic sneered, and with that brutal finality he grabbed Luigi and threw him to the floor.

"Things are really wrapping up, huh?" Samus sighed as she watched Luigi break out into exaggerated sobs and flee into a nearby restroom, while Wolf and Sonic, like Doctor Mario before them, made their contemptuous departure from the ward.

"Yeah." Yoshi gulped. "Which is why we really need to talk. Now." He took a deep breath, turned to Samus with a serene smile, and then –

"WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING DOING ALL THAT TO ME, YOU SADISTIC BITCH?!" Yoshi screamed, jumping nearly ten feet into the air as he blasted Samus (who had to squint her eyes and squeeze a finger into both ears) with the verbal manifestation of all the accumulated misery and pain he had suffered in the previous six chapters. Then, landing back on his bed, he immediately adopted an expression of peaceful zen, closing his eyes in affixed calm and raising up a finger to stop himself. "No, wait, wait," he spoke, his voice reverting back to its civil, placid tone. "Before that, let me just say one thing." Another deep breath. "I owe you a long overdue apology, Samus. Not only did I completely obliterate your Gunship and make you suffer what were supposed to be my punishments, but I let you take the fall without even feeling the least bit bad about it. I ran away and hid from you, because I was afraid – afraid of you, and afraid of whatever you might do to me, even if whatever you might do is exactly what I deserve." He gulped, and extended a reconciling hand. "I'm sorry. Really, really sorry. Can – can you find it in your heart to forgive this coward of a dinosaur?"

"Oh – well, yeah, you're forgiven," Samus said without much thinking or even hearing what Yoshi said, still visibly shaken from the sudden outburst of noise of and aggression he had roasted her with. They shook firm hands, and with that Yoshi said cheerfully, "Good! And with that out of the way…" He took a deep breath, turned to Samus with a serene smile, and then –

"WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING DOING ALL THAT TO ME, YOU SADISTIC BITCH?!" Yoshi screamed, jumping nearly ten feet into the air as he blasted Samus (who had to squint her eyes and squeeze a finger into both ears) with the verbal manifestation of all the misery and pain he had suffered in the previous six chapters.

"I'm sorry, Yoshi!" Samus cried in immediate self-defense as Yoshi landed back on the bed, crossing his arms and turning his head away from Samus with a violent hmmph! "I didn't actually want to hurt you, or make you slice off your tongue – there wasn't even any poison in the milk! All I wanted was – well, as a punishment for all you did – just, make you suffer – a little bit, mentally, you know, for an hour, and then I'll come down and set you free, and – and – and that'll be all. I didn't actually think you'd cut off your own tongue, or even if you did, that it'd come off you like that!" In desperation she thrust her own reconciling hand forward, which Yoshi regarded briefly with cold eyes before upturning his nose again with another hmmph! "I'm really sorry, too, and – well, I guess we're kinda even now, so – so, well, can we just shake and forget this whole thing ever happened, please?"

When Yoshi swiveled his head back, all anger in his eyes had all but disappeared, replaced instead by the exhaustion of hurt and sadness. "I don't know, Samus," he muttered, looking down at his own hands instead of her own. "I know what I did was pretty horrible, but – you really hurt me today, you know? I – I think I might take a while to fully recover from all that happened to me, and –"

"I'll buy you some ice cream once Doctor Mario lets you out of here."

"You're forgiven," Yoshi said instantly and automatically as he ignored Samus's hand and jumped forward to embrace her in a tight, affectionate hug.

"Coffee?"

"Brewster!" Yoshi cried in surprising welcome, unwrapping himself from Samus, much to the asphyxiated bounty hunter's relief. Brewster had appeared on the other side of his bed, balancing a tray of coffee cups and three different silver pour over kettle on his right wing, dressed as smartly as ever in bowtie and black suit. "What happened to your café, man? Is this how you're forced to do your business now?"

"No, no. I got my café back, coo. I am simply venturing into the business of delivering, and I thought I'd start with the hospital, where the sick and bedridden are unable to enjoy the divine pleasures of my coffee. Coo." He bobbed up and down slightly, as though resting on uneven flooring, before asking again, "So, Yoshi, what coffee would you like? I've got Kilimanjaro, Blue Mountain, and Mocha, as well as some sugar and cream should you desire to vary the level of sweetness or richness of your coffee."

"I'll take the sugar packets."

"Children," Brewster muttered under his breath as he threw three square paper packets into Yoshi's waiting mouth. Yoshi popped them open by squeezing them to the roof of his mouth. He closed his eyes, squirmed in pleasure as the sugary blobs of saliva oozed all over his tongue and dissolved their sweetness into the starved, parched earth that greedily soaked up the rain of blessing after such affliction of torturous drought.

"The usual, Samus?" Brewster turned to Samus next, his wing already wrapped around the handle of the kettle labeled "Blue Mountain".

"Yeah," Samus panted, still catching her breath from the hug that had squeezed all the air out of her. She hesitated as Brewster finished pouring the thick, brown-black stream into a cup, and then, just as he was about to hand it to her, blurted out, "and a bit of sugar if you still have it, Brewster."

"Coo! Sugar? You?!" Brewster exclaimed, nearly dropping the cup. Yoshi quickly retracted his legs to his chest as Brewster held the cup over the bed, gazing in wonder at Samus's strained face, which seemed to battle an inner conflict of replying with a confirmation or a hasty change of mind. Brewster simply shook his head as he rested the cup back on the tray, ripped open a packet of sugar, and poured the glistening flakes into the cup, before handing it back to Samus, which she accepted with both hands. "That's a surprise. Why the change, coo?"

"Mind your own business," Samus snapped, reverting back to her snarky old self, before blowing over the rim of the cup and exposing her tongue to the uncharted territories of slightly sweetened coffee.

"As you wish," Brewster said as he positioned the remaining cups and kettles on his tray nicely. "And with that, we must be back to my café. Make sure you finish your coffee before it cools, coo."

"We?" Yoshi frowned as he swallowed the celebrating rebirth of his tastebuds. "What do you mean, we? Who else –"

Yoshi's question was answered as Brewster walked – or rather, Captain Falcon crawled – towards the exit. The increase in distance revealed that Brewster had not been standing up, but instead had been sitting atop a saddle on Captain Falcon's naked back the whole time. A scanty black BDSM lingerie was all that protected the disgraced racer's privates from prying eyes, and a red ball gag bound over his face turned all attempts to speak into muffled moans and whines. Slave Falcon turned to Yoshi, whose eyes and mouth could only grow wider and wider in response to the plea of abject humiliation that communicated from his pupils. When the eyes passed over Samus's, however, Falcon's entire body seemed to spasm with vibrations that half-heartedly brought out the definitions of every muscle, his forlorn degradation briefly invaded by an instinctual attempt to flex for the ladies. As Samus rolled her eyes and looked away, Brewster turned to say, "Remember: Coffee is a drink best served hot, but revenge, my young ones, is a dish best served… Coo."

And with a tight slap of wing against buttock, he and the crawling figure of ignominy were gone.

"Do I want to know?" Yoshi said after another long bout of silence.

"You really don't."

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